Joe Arpaio is trailing his old No. 2 in his effort to be reinstated as Arizona’s Maricopa County sheriff for the seventh time.
With 387,000 ballots counted in the Republican primary, Arpaio, 88, is behind his former chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, 37% to 36%, or a margin of 572 votes.
Arpaio, who earned a reputation for his harsh treatment of inmates and support of racial profiling when he last held the position between 1993 to 2017, outraised his two GOP rivals who are also seeking to become the top officer. They include Sheridan and Glendale police officer Mike Crawford.
Once self-described as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” and likened to ally President Trump, Arpaio was ousted from office by centrist Democrat Paul Penzone, a former Phoenix Police Department sergeant, by 13 percentage points the same year Trump won Arizona and the White House.
The Republican primary winner will face Penzone in November in Arizona’s most-populous county.
Arpaio’s defeat was, in part, attributed to the taxpayer burden of the protracted legal battle over his illegal immigration raids targeting the Latino community. Trump, a fellow immigration hawk, pardoned Arpaio of a criminal contempt of court conviction in 2017 after Arpaio defied a federal court order and refused to stop indiscriminately racial profiling.
Both Arpaio and Trump have been criticized for suggesting former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Arpaio cites his mixed-race grandchildren as evidence he’s not a racist.
Demographic changes in Maricopa County, the nation’s fourth most populous county that covers Phoenix, played a role in his 2016 downfall as well. It hampered his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign too.
The U.S. Army veteran, who lived and worked in Mexico and Turkey during his three-decadeslong tenure with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration before becoming sheriff, has vowed to re-open his Tent City jail, a controversial outdoor detention facility. Penzone has turned the facility into a space for a drug rehabilitation program.
“I’m not a flip-flopper like a lot of political people are,” Arpaio told the Washington Examiner last year. “I may lose votes, it may help me get votes, that’s the way it is.”
