Dan Saban enters 3rd run to unseat Arpaio

A familiar face has emerged among the handful of challengers who have formally lodged their bids to unseat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the 2016 election.

Dan Saban, a former Buckeye police chief who lost two previous runs at the office, filed his paperwork this week with the County Elections Department.

Saban is running as a Republican, and joins Democrat John Rowan, independent Kenneth Wayne Baker, Republican Roger Baldwin and Arpaio on the county’s current tally of candidates.

MONTINI: Back to the (same old) future with Dan Saban

After seven years in the private sector, Saban said his decision to once again reach for the sheriff’s badge is simple.

“It’s a general desire to make things right for public safety in Maricopa County,” he said, calling Arpaio’s nearly 23-year reign an “atrocity.”

Saban vows to be a change agent for the embattled agency and said he plans to refocus on public safety.

“This is what I do for a living,” he said of law enforcement. “I’m all about partnering and sharing and transparency. I’ve never been over budget, in contempt of court, or had the city pay out on a massive lawsuit.”

Arpaio campaign manager Chad Willems said they had heard rumors that Saban would again take a shot at the office but assumed it would be on the Green Party ticket, since he has changed his party registration throughout the years.

Willems said the Arpaio campaign feels confident the sitting sheriff will secure an unprecedented seventh term, regardless of his current controversies.

“Despite what is being reported in the media, the sheriff still enjoys high approval ratings for the job he’s doing and to fight crime,” Willems said.

In three years since his most recent victory, Arpaio has been found to racially profile Latinos, has cost the county tens of millions in court-ordered reforms, admitted to investigating a federal judge and is currently facing three allegations of contempt of court.

But if history is any indication, ousting what will be an 84-year-old Arpaio in 2016 still won’t be easy.

He’s raised $6.5 million in donations since January 2013, Willems said, and maintained a campaign war chest of $2 million as of late last year.

Arpaio survived the 2012 race against popular Phoenix police veteran Paul Penzone following a countywide scandal and amid high-profile discrimination lawsuits leveled by the U.S. Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union.

But perhaps what will be most damning for his conservative base this time around will be the elimination of practices that spurred most of his legal woes.

While Arpaio’s hard-line policies against illegal immigration have galvanized his constituents in previous years, his stance today remains only a theory.

He has either been stripped of or given up all of his controversial immigration-enforcement practices, including workplace raids, traffic sweeps and his authority to hand over undocumented immigrants to federal officials.

ARPAIO THROUGH THE YEARS

Willems said immigration will remain a part of the sheriff’s platform.

Maricopa County residents will have to decide who is on the “right side” of the illegal-immigration debate, Willems said: Arpaio or the federal government.

“I believe that voters of Maricopa County will agree with Sheriff Joe,” he said. “I think it’s a national issue. … It will certainly be a part of the campaign, not just with the sheriff’s race but for other races around the country.”

Since his 2008 retirement from Buckeye, Saban has spent time working in security, law-enforcement-litigation consulting and said he spent time in Trinidad doing police work in 2010.

Saban said that, as sheriff, he would use his consulting experience to help dislodge the office from the legal battles that have plagued it for years.

“It’s time to get back on course — to focus on the real public-safety concerns for Maricopa County — admitting that we’re violating civil orders,” he said. “(The current administration) is not what the Republican Party stands for.”

Saban ran a brief exploratory campaign in 2012 but stood down and instead threw his support behind Penzone.

Saban, who said he’s a lifelong Republican, tried his hand as a Democrat in the 2008 general election and was defeated by 172,000 votes.

But it was Saban’s maiden run — a Republican primary campaign against Arpaio in 2004 — that launched what critics say was one of Arpaio’s dirtiest political schemes to date.

Arpaio’s camp opened an investigation into his opponent following an accusation that Saban had raped his adoptive mother in the early 1970s. Former Chief Deputy David Hendershott testified later that he leaked the allegation to a reporter before the investigation began, prompting a story on Channel 15.

The investigation was later transferred to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in Tucson, where detectives closed the case, citing the statute of limitations.

Saban opened a defamation suit against Arpaio and Hendershott but lost.

Today, Saban said he’s undeterred by Arpaio’s political tactics.

“Even at the length he’s gone to try to discredit me … he hugely underestimates my resolve,” Saban said. “I can’t sit back and watch without at least stepping up.”