Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan is Joe Arpaio, minus the outsized personality and the political skill. Consider his tire- less campaigning for perennial loser Rodney Glassman, who keeps fumbling (and making up things, like endorsements and dona- tion milestones) as he runs for Arizona Attorney General. Jeez, Jerry, why hitch your wagon to a horse who actually has a shot against incumbent Democrat Kris Mayes when you can ride an assclown instead? Put aside the incongruity of Sheridan’s Queens accent and his fondness for cowboy hats, or even the fact that he has hired and/ or promoted all his old cronies from back in the day when he was Sheriff Joe’s plodding chief deputy, playing human donut pillow to Arpaio’s ancient keister. Consider instead Sheridan’s genius plan to get his allies on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to raise a stink about the court-ordered federal monitoring of the sheriff’s office. OK, maybe it was just coinkydink a couple of supervisors showed up alongside a passel of gun-slingin’, geriatric white folks to support Sheridan at a community meeting earlier this year. That stunt backfired badly — forcing federal judge G. Murray Snow to skip the event and order all future monitor meet- ings be held in the safe, unarmed confines of federal court. Republicans’ gripe was about the projected $350 million it has taken to get the sheriff’s office to stop racial profiling — and, oddly, not the racial profiling itself. About that, though: Earlier this year, Snow released an audit that showed that from 2014-24, the sheriff’s office misattributed $163 million to Melendres compliance costs, which was 72% of the $226 million it supposedly spent during that time. Padding the bill were golf carts, cable TV, trips to Washington, D.C., car washes, you name it. Sheridan wasn’t sheriff during those years, but he wears the big boy hat now. Like your Thanksgiving fowl, he’s done. – Stephen Lemons It’s been a bad year for Republicans in what they think are secure group chats. Luke Mosiman and Rachel Hope may not have pulled a Pete Hegseth and included a reporter in a Signal chat about a bomb strike. But Mosiman and Hope — both in their mid-20s and serving as the chair and events chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, respectively — did learn the hard way that nothing is ever really private. In early October, Politico reported more than seven months of messages in a Telegram group chat among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Vermont and Arizona — basically, all the people you’d avoid in a crowded bar. Over the course of 2,900 pages of chats, the leaders referred to Black people as monkeys and “watermelon people,” used racial slurs, called rape “epic” and talked about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. In one of the chats, Mosiman suggested the groups could win support in the race to head the national Young Republican organization by linking their opponent to a white supremacist group. “Can we get them to start releasing Nazi edits with her… Like pro Nazi and faciam (sic) propaganda,” Mosiman asked. “Omg I love this plan,” Hope responded. “The only problem is we will lose the Kansas delegation,” Mosiman said. The Arizona Republican Party was among a chorus that called for Mosiman and Hope to resign. Yet both remain featured on the group’s website. Mosiman did lose a gig at the Center for Arizona Policy, an anti-abortion advocacy group. – Morgan Fischer Since Corey Woods was reelected as Tempe mayor in early 2024, he and the Tempe City Council have come under increasing scrutiny from community members who claim they have run amok. Last year, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office ruled that Woods and the council illegally held three secret meetings. Though executive sessions usually aren’t taped, a recording of one of the meetings revealed the councilmembers bashing their own constit- uents, referring to one as a “crazy uncle” and delighting in calling the opponents of a plan to build an NHL arena “cave people.” This year, Woods and the council were forced to beat a hasty retreat after trying to ram through a divisive special events ordi- nance that some felt targeted groups that helped Tempe’s unhoused community. On the heels of a months-long campaign to crimi- nally cite and prosecute Tempe residents who feed the homeless, Woods and the council hastily and unanimously passed a new ordinance with little public input and in the face of loud opposition. A whopping 77 people spoke against the change during public comment the day of the vote, which wasn’t conducted until after midnight. The rushed process came back to bite them. Tempe citizens organized a petition to repeal the new law — facing interference from paid counter-pamphleteers with mysterious backing — and successfully collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot. Recognizing a loss in the making, Woods and the cornered councilmembers chose to back down and repeal the ordinance them- selves. – TJ L’Heureux Jerry Sheridan Arizona Young Republicans Corey Woods (Remixed Photo Gage Skidmore Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0) (TURKEY ART BY BRIGETTE DOBY ) (Remixed Photo via Pexels) (Photo by TJ L’Heureux)
