Joe Arpaio no longer 'America's Toughest Sheriff'

Joe Arpaio was first elected Maricopa County sheriff so long ago that an entire generation of voters was born and came of age during his time in office.

But that era ended suddenly Tuesday night when challenger Paul Penzone defeated Arpaio and was declared the winner.

Arpaio, 84, had been sheriff for 24 years. For many of those years, his brand of politics made him the most popular politician in Arizona: His old-fashioned take on law enforcement, his quirky personality and gimmicks, his unrelenting stance on illegal immigration.

Many of those attributes also led to Arpao's downfall.

He was swept into office in the wake of a big court payout because of the actions of his predecessor. He has surpassed that payout seventy-fold. And his refusal to stop enforcing federal immigration laws despite a court order may put him in a jail cell.

Arpaio burst on the scene in 1992 after Maricopa County paid out more than $2 million to men who were falsely charged with a gruesome murder. He was 60 years old, retired from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and helping out at his wife’s travel agency, among other things selling potential trips into outer space.

Arpaio has always liked a good gimmick, and it helped make him immensely popular.

He built Tent City to prevent jail overflow, made inmates eat green baloney and wear pink underwear and striped uniforms. He formed posses that allowed his faithful to drive around in law-enforcement vehicles. He professed a soft spot for animals. He spoke in bumper-sticker slogans that spouted truisms about law and order, crime in the streets and how immigrants were overrunning the state.

Targeting immigrants

Illegal immigration was the greatest gimmick of all.

By late 2005, Arpaio banded with former County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his own former chief deputy, Russell Pearce, who became president of the state Senate. Together they built a deportation machine, crafting laws that allowed them to arrest undocumented immigrants and hold them in jail without bond until they were deported.

Arpaio staged regular round-ups in Hispanic neighborhoods, each one attended by the press corps, with plenty of photo ops for the sheriff and the hapless folks who were caught in the snares. With his bold pronouncements about curbing illegal immigration, Arpaio became a national hero, a symbol of America and, as his fans would regularly write in to the newspaper, “the only person doing anything about crime and illegal immigration.”

In 2008, however, Thomas and Arpaio began to attack their political enemies, charging judges and county supervisors with crimes and filing a racketeering suit against them in federal court. All of those cases fell apart. Thomas and one of his chief deputies were disbarred. Arpaio’s chief deputy, widely regarded as the mastermind of the political attacks, was fired. And all of them came under federal investigation for abuse of power.

Arpaio survived.

Ironically, though he had come into office because his predecessor cost some $2 million in court awards, by fall 2015, Arpaio had racked up more than $142 million in court costs because of lawsuits from prisoners who died in his jail, the judges and county officials he charged and sued, journalists who had been targeted by his office, and immigrants unlawfully detained.

His faithful followers remained loyal. His campaign coffers still bulged, increasingly from monies collected out of state.

Then the rallying cause that propelled him into the national spotlights threatened to take him down.

The state immigration laws that began to be enacted in 2005 had reached a crescendo with the 2010 passage of the omnibus bill called Senate Bill 1070. SB 1070 never really went into effect, however, and was beset by lawsuits from immigrant advocacy groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Department of Justice itself.

By this fall, nearly all of the state immigration laws enacted since 2005 have been struck down in federal court. And in the meantime, the right to act as surrogates of U.S. Customs and Border Protection was stripped from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Finding himself in court

Arpaio was sued in federal court by Hispanics detained after traffic stops intended to round up illegal immigrants. He lost, and in 2011, the judge ordered him to stop enforcing federal law. He remained defiant for 18 months. When the judge found out, he dragged Arpaio back into court to face contempt of court.

The sheriff's interests had become more quirky. He obsessed over President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, sending detectives to Hawaii to investigate. He became hooked on conspiracy theories, including one that linked the judge in his federal lawsuit to the Justice Department and the White House. He sent investigators to look into bias allegations against the judge’s wife.

Arpaio was found in civil contempt of court, and the judge referred him to the Justice Department to prosecute him for criminal contempt of court. Those proceedings are ongoing, and a judge already has determined that if Arpaio is found in criminal contempt, he could be jailed for as long as six months.

Yet he remained defiant. He joined forces with 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over immigration issues and the “birther” controversy, and ran television ads denouncing allegations against him as another Obama-originated plot.

Here, from The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com archives, is a selection of the history of "America's Toughest Sheriff":

Arpaio charged with criminal contempt

Last month, a U.S. District Court judge charged Arpaio with criminal contempt. His trial date was originally set for Dec. 6, but that has been postponed. The filing walks through five years of the sheriff’s resistance to U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow, who has presided over a long racial-profiling case out of which the criminal-contempt charge grew. The document alleges Arpaio was more interested in maintaining his famed tough-on-immigration persona than following Snow’s orders. Read the story here.

Arpaio and the birther movement

Even if Donald Trump has given up the birther conspiracy, in September, Arpaio said he was still investigating President Barack Obama's birth certificate. He vowed to the Surprise Tea Party Patriots, the group that five years ago petitioned him to investigate President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, that he was continuing the inquiry.  “I’m not going to give up, and we’re looking into it,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.” Read the story here.

Voters have unfavorable view

In September, a poll suggested that the majority of Maricopa County voters viewed Arpaio unfavorably. The poll found 57 percent of Maricopa County respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Arpaio, compared to 54 percent statewide. The latest poll also shows Arpaio is less popular among women and college-educated voters, and extremely unpopular with Democrats, Hispanics and young people. Read the story here.

Doing it his way

An eight-part profile of Arpaio from September 2015: Sheriff Joe Arpaio has always done it his way. He has embarked on quixotic crusades that have endeared him or villainized him to Maricopa County residents and national pundits alike. He does what he wants. Read the story here.

20 years of controversies

A federal abuse of power investigation into Arpaio’s office in 2011: 20 years of controversies. Few politicians in the history of Arizona have been as popular and as divisive as Arpaio. To the sheriff's many critics, the scrutiny he is under is well deserved and a long time coming. Read the story here.

In-depth look at 'America's Toughest Sheriff'

Arpaio is one of the most polarizing political figures in the state and a fixture in media around the world. The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com has been there to chronicle Arpaio’s career from the beginning. A look at the man, the cop, the jailer, the crusader, the politician and the PR man. Read the series here.

Arpaio’s attempts to root out corruption

In 2008,  Arpaio's office launched an investigation into the state Department of Racing, which had been investigating the business dealings of an Arpaio campaign fundraiser. It was the third time in six months that Arpaio's office had pursued investigations into public officials or agencies that had been at odds with him or his policies, but it appeared to be the first in which his office had targeted an agency that was at odds with a key financial contributor. Read the story here.

Low-key Ava Arpaio, the wife

Why would a woman stand by a man who some say dishes out more than one brand of bologna? And who would like living with a gun-toting lawman who seems to love the limelight just a little too much?  The answer is Ava Arpaio, a quiet, attractive woman who has given the sheriff her complete vote of confidence. ''He is my hero,'' said Ava, 65. Read her story here.