Joe’s Brain from p 17 No answer. As festivities wound down, Arpaio made a point to tell everyone about the letter at his birthday party while Frank Sinatra crooned over the loudspeaker. Then it was time for Sinatra’s “My Way,” Arpaio’s favorite song. Trump’s, too. “Donald Trump stole that from me when I talked to him about it on a plane,” Arpaio told New Times in one of several hours-long interviews between early February and late July. Last week, Fountain Hills voters cast their ballots for or against the polarizing former Maricopa County bigwig. Votes were still being tallied and the race was too close to call as of press time. This small-town election is Arpaio’s Alamo. His last, desperate chance to regain power. If he gets the chance, his last political gig will likely resemble his longest, if Arpaio and more than two dozen people who know him well are to be believed. They all paint the same picture, with many of the same hallmarks: money, power, patronage, revenge, cult of personality, hero worship, blind loyalty, fearmongering, and looseness with the facts. He’s not riding into the sunset just yet. And he’s not shy about admitting his final wish is to get even with his political enemies and to go out on top. Arpaio is like a predator in a cage that’s way too small. Always in motion. Hungry. He flashes back to when he was king of Arizona’s conservative political jungle. His influence has waned, but the predatory instincts that made him widely reviled are as sharp as ever. The thought that he might not die in office keeps him up at night. And he knows it takes a lot of cash, a few true-hearted acolytes, and a sprinkling of mistruths to make his dream come true and avoid a personal nightmare. Bromance Brewing Arpaio’s lengthy reign as sheriff is checkered with civil and human rights violations. He sank hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into civil lawsuits that tanked his career, and was later convicted Pablo Robles of criminal contempt in 2017 after disobeying a federal judge’s order to stop racial profiling, which he still calls a “witch hunt.” Money and policy changes were awarded to Arpaio’s victims in three federal court cases in Phoenix, Puente v. Arpaio, Ortega-Melendres v. Arpaio, and U.S. v. Maricopa County, in which Arpaio was a named defendant, between 2013 and 2017. His personal legal entanglements are all behind him now, thanks to an unsolic- ited presidential pardon from Trump. With a clean slate, Arpaio spent this year desperately campaigning not to lose his fourth-straight election. He invited Trump to his Fountain Hills birthday party. Trump declined. But the ex-president did fly into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in late July for a rally in Prescott. “You’re very popular, Joe,” Trump said at the July 22 rally to deafening applause. “Weren’t those the nice days? You had Sheriff Joe, and you had no problems with illegal immigrants pouring into your living room. What they did to him was a disgrace. He’s a hell of a man. You remember the pink tents, the pink underwear, the pink everything. Everything was immaculate, it was clean.” Trump was alluding to the infamous seven-acre “Tent City Jail” in Phoenix that helped make Arpaio a household name. Inmates at the now-defunct jail, which some critics dubbed a “concentration camp,” ate scanty meals of only peanut butter and bread and donned pink under- wear, socks, and flip-flops. The jail closed immediately after voters first booted Arpaio from office in 2016. He now sells pink boxer briefs (made in Pakistan, by the way) in an upscale Fountain Hills shop for $25 a pair. He’ll even slap an autograph on them. In 2007, during Arpaio’s heyday, illegal immigration in the U.S. soared to its The former sherrif in his Fountain Hills campaign office. highest numbers ever at the time. From 1996 to 2015, the suicide rate among jail deaths in Arpaio’s lockups was an astounding 24 percent. Of those 157 suicides, 39 were hangings. “The whole thing was like something out of a third-world dictatorship,” Phoenix- based veteran political New Times colum- nist Stephen Lemons said in an interview. “He wanted to turn the Sheriff’s Office into a mini version of ICE, terrorizing entire cities. It was a sickening, sickening time.” In 2008, New Times reported that, under Arpaio’s authority, and maybe at his direc- tion, “the intake holding cells are extremely dirty, and the sinks and toilets unsanitary and inoperable.” “Trump ruined my reputation when he said I ran a clean system,” Arpaio told New Times just after the rally, belly laughing. Tent City bore hallmarks of Trump’s 18 AUG 11TH–AUG 17TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
