For instance, take Arpaio's now-infamous statement (view here) on a November 2007 episode of Lou Dobbs' CNN show that it was an "honor" to be called a KKK member. The clip has long since gone viral, giving ammunition to those who believe Arpaio to be an unrepentant bigot.
Yet the sheriff's involvement with extreme hate groups is not incidental. The relationship has been prolonged and intentional, arguably helping him get re-elected last year in a county where much of the electorate is hostile toward Mexican immigrants.
Stephen Lemons
Neo-Nazis Thomas Coletto (left) and J.T. Ready bait a local musician they believed to be Jewish.
Ready (second from right) participates in a National Socialist Movement rally in Omaha, Nebraska.
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Since 2007, Arpaio has appeared at nativist events, accepted awards from groups such as the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, welcomed U.S.A. leader Rusty Childress into his immigration sweep headquarters, spoken at nativist meetings frequented by neo-Nazis, and used petitions circulated by extremists to justify his immigration dragnets.
Also troubling are indications that the MCSO, in some cases, instructs U.S.A. through member Barb Heller, who has bragged about her contacts with the Sheriff's Office to anyone who will listen, and who apparently receives instruction and advice on how U.S.A. should handle itself.
In the light of Arpaio's love affair with nativist groups, his photo with a neo-Nazi seems almost inevitable. But the implications of it are disturbing.
The presence of neo-Nazis at the march and Arpaio's snapshot with Lombardi were first reported by New Times on one of the newspaper's blogs. NBC affiliate Channel 12 later picked up on a YouTube video of Ready and Lombardi flipping (view here) sieg heils that New Times had already posted.
After seeing the video and photo, Arizona Anti-Defamation League director Bill Straus called on Arpaio to distance himself from neo-Nazis.
"The fact that it's posted on Stormfront is enough for Arpaio to say, 'Hey, I'm not looking for support from neo-Nazis,'" Straus told New Times of the Arpaio-Lombardi snapshot.
But the sheriff has yet to condemn his National Socialist supporters. All the MCSO public-relations team could muster was this lukewarm defense of their boss to Channel 12:
"It is not the sheriff's position to discourage groups on either side from exercising their rights. Sheriff Arpaio does not have any control over who shows up to these public protests."
A couple of days later, another jackboot dropped. New Times discovered that the National Socialist Movement member who scored the sweetheart pic with Arpaio was Thomas Vito Coletto, who was implicated in what some thought was a "Columbine copycat" plot against Coletto's high school, Desert Mountain, in 2007. Coletto and four others were collared for burglarizing chemicals such as ammonium nitrate, the same compound used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Coletto, now 19, ultimately pleaded guilty to criminal damage in a 2008 deal with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, which dropped the burglary charge against him. He received two years' probation and a hefty fine.
The Scottsdale teen claims the incident was merely high school shenanigans, misinterpreted by the authorities in the paranoia over the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. However, a YouTube video of and by Coletto showing him using homemade explosives in an infantile effort to re-create the World War II experiences of his grandfather (who, ironically, fought the Nazis in Europe) is particularly eyebrow-raising in light of Coletto's neo-Nazi affiliations. (Coletto removed the video after New Times mentioned it in a blog post.)
This May 2 dalliance with Coletto and J.T. Ready wasn't the first time Arpaio has associated with the neo-Nazis. In March 2008, the sheriff spoke before a United for a Sovereign America meeting at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Sunnyslope, where U.S.A. affiliate Elton Hall was in attendance. Hall, 75, is a legend in Arizona neo-Nazi circles, venerated by racist skinheads for his work as an organizer for George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party in the 1960s.
Hall has been around so long that he's actually mentioned in scholarly tomes about American neo-Nazis, yet U.S.A. members embraced him as a "patriot," a term they used to describe him in one of the organization's official statements. Hall has kept vigil with other U.S.A. protesters at armed demonstrations outside civil rights leader Salvador Reza's Macehualli Day Labor Center in north Phoenix. For more than a year, U.S.A. has protested at the center, which gives day laborers a place to wait for jobs without trespassing on other businesses' properties.
New Times exposed the septuagenarian storm trooper's participation in U.S.A. activities in February 2008, shortly after Hall was injured in a two-car collision as he picketed near the Macehualli center. He recovered in time to hear Arpaio speak at the VFW post on March 20.
If Arpaio could claim ignorance about Hall before the VFW appearance, the sheriff could not do so afterward. Following a press conference on March 21 to announce an anti-immigration sweep in the area of Thomas Road and 32nd Street, New Times confronted Arpaio about his ties to U.S.A. and about U.S.A.'s accepting neo-Nazis into its fold.
J.T. Ready frequented U.S.A. meetings when they were held at the Kia dealership Childress once owned on West Camelback Road in Phoenix. And Childress gave the maximum amount, $370, to Ready's 2006 Mesa City Council bid, as did Aron Mezo, Childress' partner in the now-defunct Scottsdale nightclub E4. Childress also employed Ready as a bouncer at the club, during the time Ready was running for office.