Arpaio’s time has come and gone
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The Atlantic reported that the future caught up to Joe Arpaio, the “toughest sheriff in America,” who was crushed in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Arizona, and although pardoned by Trump a year ago, consigned him to the kind of jail he dreaded most: irrelevance.
Surely there were many reasons why he was crushed in the three-way contest. Perhaps roughly 80 percent of the state’s Republican voters spurned him because of his age or, more likely, they’d prefer not to lose an open Senate seat in Arizona for the first time since 1976. And, most importantly, they appear to have recognized that Arizona is changing, that Arpaio’s antics don’t play well anymore with an electorate that’s becoming increasingly diverse.
Arpaio’s time has come and gone. If there was ever a hard-line consensus, even in conservative Maricopa County, the statewide attitude toward immigration has become more nuanced. According to a July poll sponsored by Politico, even though 66 percent of Arizonans support “removing or deporting undocumented immigrants,” 74 percent in a separate question support “a clear path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements.” And in the wake of recent voter-registration campaigns, roughly two-thirds of Arizonans on the rolls are Democrats and independents.
Joseph Garcia, who directs the Latino Public Policy Center at Arizona State University' Morrison Institute, said that the state’s reputation took a major hit from its 2010 law — S.B. 1070, nicknamed the “show me your papers” law — targeting undocumented immigrants. The law was basically rendered impotent by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found most of its provisions to be unconstitutional, and by a series of settlements with civil-rights groups. But before that happened, the state suffered economic boycotts, and, in Garcia’s words, there is now “a reluctance by Arizona leaders to relive those days … By and large Arizona is living in a post S.B. 1070 world, and business development and economic growth are the key drivers of state legislation.”
READ: Arizona’s Voters Have Spoken and Rendered Joe Arpaio Irrelevant