90-year-old racist Joe Arpaio appears to be headed for yet another electoral defeat, trailing in the race for Fountain Hills, Arizona mayor. ”The former six-term sheriff of Maricopa County said late Tuesday night that the vote totals so far came from early ballots and that he was awaiting the totals of in-person voting in his bid to unseat two-term Mayor Ginny Dickey,” the Associated Press reported.
He can keep waiting all he wants, but it’s likely not going to go any different than the rest of the races Arpaio has sought, and lost, since getting resoundingly rebuked by Maricopa County voters in 2016. Joe, maybe it’s best to just call it a day.
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Arpaio has sought numerous different seats since losing his race by double-digits to Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone. In 2018, he sought the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Flake, ultimately losing the GOP primary to insurrectionist Kelli Ward and Martha McSally, who would later lose to Kyrsten Sinema.
Joe then sought to regain his old Maricopa County seat, even after shamefully costing taxpayers in the state millions upon millions of dollars in legal fees due to his racist shenanigans as sheriff. “Arizona sheriff Arpaio's immigration patrols targeting Latinos to cost public $200M,” the AP reported last year. Arpaio’s office was so singularly obsessed with targeting immigrants and people of color that hundreds of sex crimes, including crimes against children, went under-investigated, or not investigated at all.
Officials in fact settled with one victim for more than $3 million, the AP said in 2015. “Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio apologizes for inadequate investigations into over 400 sex crimes, including the rape of a 13-year-old girl, from 2004 to 2007.” If he really meant it, he would have resigned from office and never shown his face in public again. But we all know what happened next: continued harassment of Latinos and immigrants, the court order to stop his racist shenanigans, the contempt of court guilty verdict, the pardon from the insurrectionist president.
“Arpaio said he doesn’t worry about his past haunting him in the mayor’s race,” the AP reported on Tuesday. “All that baggage didn’t make a difference, except in 2016. But I had baggage in 2012—big baggage,” Arpaio told the AP. “And I got reelected.” So get that, everyone: it didn’t make any difference, except for when he lost, and has lost in every race since then.
It’s not hard to figure out why Arpaio continues to humiliate himself. Several days ago, Phoenix New Times (which has done phenomenal work over the years reporting on Arpaio’s abuses) noted that the racist former sheriff was charging people $45 each to attend his 90th birthday party, to which he arrived in Cadillac DeVille. “Once inside, attendees didn't think twice about purchasing Inkjet-printed photos of Arpaio's birthday cake for $741.40, plus tax and shipping. None of that money appeared on Arpaio's most recent campaign finance reports,” even though speakers (including the awful Wendy Rogers) made very political speeches.
It’s a fact that Latino and immigrant organizers and activists, through their years-long campaigns, helped bring down this terrible racist of sheriff. He’s remained toxic enough, and washed-out enough, that his subsequent electoral efforts have failed. But clearly, Arpaio knows that as long he’s got one racist sucker (because what other kind of person is still a fan of this man in 2022?) willing to shell out $45 for dry birthday cake, he doesn’t care how many times he loses.
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