In any other place, the publicity
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has received recently would be seen as, well, horrendous:
• His supporters launched one of the sleaziest TV political ads ever against his political opponent in the November 4 election, Dan Saban, resulting in a backlash that drove the ad off the air (see Sarah Fenske's column this week).
Deputies in full combat regalia at the Mesa public library.
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• Accreditation for the Maricopa County jail, which Arpaio's lawyers had used as an example of why critics who complained about bad conditions in the jail were wrong, was revoked.
• A surveillance video surfaced of a violent beating death that took place in the jail, revealing tragic flaws in the security and control of the facility.
• The sheriff raided municipal buildings in Mesa in what appeared to be nothing more than a blatant political maneuver against Arpaio's perceived enemy, Mesa Police Chief George Gascón.
As a public safety effort, the pre-dawn October 16 incursion into Mesa City Hall and its library was laughable — it netted just three undocumented workers. A couple of former county Superior Court judges criticized Arpaio's action in the East Valley Tribune, with former chief judge of the court Colin Campbell calling the raid "bizarre" and "extraordinary."
Whether these October surprises have influenced anyone to vote for Saban over Arpaio, though, is another story. Except for the groups that have been protesting Arpaio regularly at the county Board of Supervisors meetings and in front of the Wells Fargo building downtown, where the sheriff's headquarters are on the 19th floor, it's difficult to tell how the public is reacting to the outrage.
The local offices of the Democratic Party did not return a call before press time. Dan Saban can't seem to find the resources or the right sound bites to capitalize on Arpaio's multiple misadventures. The conservative-leaning Goldwater Institute didn't want to weigh in on what the events mean, if anything, for Arpaio's fourth bid for re-election.
Pollster Earl de Berge of the Phoenix-based Behavior Research Center says he believes the criticism of Arpaio hasn't been aimed well enough to make a crucial difference.
While Arpaio pounds away on immigration, he may be getting in trouble with voters for not enforcing other areas of the law. Trouble is, news outlets haven't fully explored the possibility that he's letting more serious crimes go as he targets illegal aliens, de Berge says. A five-day series in July in the Tribune, which dinged Arpaio's office for late responses to emergency calls, came close, but the paper doesn't have widespread influence, de Berge says.
Still, "the general mantra that he can't be defeated, I think, is baloney these days," the pollster says.
De Berge notes that voters aren't expected to be kind to incumbents in the upcoming election. Independents and swing-vote Republicans concerned that Arpaio misuses his resources by sending "60 troopers in the middle of the night to arrest three janitors" just might put Saban over the edge, he says.
Mesa Mayor Scott Smith was visibly angry during a news conference last Thursday about the raid on Mesa government offices.
"The citizens of Mesa, Arizona . . . This is their City Hall," Smith said. "[It] was, in my belief, violated by another government agency. I don't believe that's proper protocol, and I also believe that [it] crosses the line as to what proper law enforcement should do."
Smith seemed ready to pick up the flag and keep running on Friday. But by that afternoon, he had canceled a news conference and put out a press release on the issue before taking off early for the Mogollon Rim. In the release, Smith stated he had offered to meet with Arpaio, and Arpaio had accepted.
"During our meeting," Smith wrote, "I intend to discuss how the City of Mesa and the Sheriff's Office can work to resolve differences that have arisen from the challenges of overlapping jurisdictional responsibilities within the city."
Yet here's how Arpaio characterized the meeting, expected to take place October 24, to a TV news reporter: "[Smith's] coming to my office, and, boy, he's going to get an earful."
You'd think, with all the outrage shown by the mayor last Thursday, it would be the other way around.
And surely, the Mesa raid was, at best, a waste of public resources to support Arpaio's re-election campaign and stick it to Chief Gascón, who's made numerous critical statements of Arpaio in the press.
At worst, the raid put the lives of citizens at risk, as Smith said in his October 16 news conference, because Mesa authorities weren't warned of the enforcement action.
Earlier that day, well before dawn, dozens of deputies outfitted for combat operations gathered at Pioneer Park in downtown Mesa. Reports show that when a Mesa police officer came upon the group and asked what was going on, he was told it was a police dog training event. The deputies soon stormed City Hall and the library, looking for illegal immigrants who worked for Management Cleaning Controls, which the Sheriff's Office was investigating for violating the state's employer-sanctions law.
Mesa officials say the deputies arrested just two people in the library and one in the library's parking lot, all three of whom turned out to be undocumented workers. Deputies say they also arrested 13 other suspects at their Valley homes.
