Although the decision on Maricopa County Sheriff's Captain Joel Fox and the SCA donation is scheduled for Monday, we think it will probably be announced on Tuesday, after the holiday. Either way, we imagine there's still time for Fox to reveal the identity of these secret contributors.
But if he doesn't, the contributors could do the job for him. Under what rock is the Sheriff's Command Association hiding? These men (and women?) are apparently going to let the financial future of a sheriff's captain be utterly destroyed.
When Judge Thomas Shedden of the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings issues his decision, either Fox will have outfoxed his highly trained legal opponent or he'll owe $315,000.
Even if he was a millionaire, which he's not, it will hurt if this doesn't go his way. For a person of average means, it would be a life-changing amount of debt. To be honest, we're not sure how it works: Will he have to declare bankruptcy, or have his wages garnisheed for 30 or 40 years?
And the Sheriff's Command Association is willing to sit back and let it happen, apparently because of its members' paranoid and irrational fear of the media attention.
Fox's explanation has been that if he rolls over, the people who donated the $105,000 would be associated with the lowbrow TV ads that talked about Dan Saban masturbating and Tim Nelson frolicking politically with a child pornographer. And so they would. But so what? The Republican Party created the ads -- people got over it.
Let's take Fox at his word for a moment: The Sheriff's Command Association doesn't include Joe Arpaio or Dave Hendershott. The members aren't politicians or sycophants of politicians, presumably. Which makes their silence even more troubling, from an ethical standpoint.
After all, politicians and their close associates are, by nature, liars and spin-meisters. You wouldn't expect them to do the right thing. But a group of relatively average citizens would have relatively average morals. Right? Clearly, it's just not right to let Joel Fox suffer under the burden of a $315,000 debt simply to protect association members.
At the worst, outing themselves would mean a day or so of rough waters in the news media, and after that just the occasional surly glance at the grocery store from their liberal neighbors. Their conservative friends and neighbors, meanwhile, would laugh and slap them on their backs for a job well done. For this, they would let a man who puts his life on the line in uniform be swatted like a fly?
At this late date, it seems as though the SCA must be comprised of either amoral cowards or political types with something to hide. And the SCA members prove the point of those who screamed foul over the ads when they came out. The ads were so sleazy that association members, even now, are petrified that they might be linked to them.
