In the fall of 2006, I had the privilege of attending an intimate campaign event for one Jerry Airola, who was then running for sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Jerry was selling himself as a former small-town police officer who started a helicopter flight school business that had taken off, and now felt the need to give back by pumping a lot of his own dollars into trying to become Las Vegas’ top cop.

While he had no shortage of terrible policies to propose, Jerry placed distinct emphasis on his loyalty to the policing methods of Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio—more famously, “Sheriff Joe”—and particularly his preference for outdoor “tent city” jails. Jerry promised that if elected, he would establish a tent prison facility in the Ivanpah Valley desert, just south of Las Vegas, to house “gang members.” The older members of the audience enthusiastically approved of this idea.

In a rare bit of good news for Southern Nevadans over the last few years, Jerry ended up losing the election. A year and a half later, his company, Silver State Helicopters, suddenly closed its doors and declared bankruptcy. Turns out, Silver State had been operating as essentially a Ponzi scheme, with new sign-ups needed to pay current obligations—a fantastic ethical example set by someone who wanted to police others.

Jerry remained active in politics until the end. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal article linked above, a week before Silver State went bankrupt, Jerry co-hosted a fundraiser with a long-prominent businessman who has seen his political profile rise in recent months: Las Vegas Sands CEO and Newt Gingrich’s sugar daddy, Sheldon Adelson.

I bring up Jerry Airola not to relish in the humbling of a hypocrite, although that is always appropriate, but because he is an example of the noxious spread of the Sheriff Joe law enforcement mentality.

Sheriff Joe attended last week’s Republican debate in suburban Phoenix, and to the great delight of this media hog, he was caught on CNN cameras several times. The sheriff might as well enjoy the spotlight; after all, his ideas and general doctrine have been in it throughout this primary season.

George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and immigration policy ideas that weren’t primarily motivated by a desire to humiliate Americans of color are dead. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina largely as a result of nativist campaigning, Rick Santorum may be the most judgmental person of all time, or at least second to Binyamin Netanyahu, and even Mitt Romney, he of the inability to employ undocumented landscapers because it was not politically convenient, has had to take a harder stance on immigration. Maybe Mitt can repackage his line about enjoying being able to fire people who provide services to him; it could be effective here.

Sheriff Joe has been in office since 1992, and while his share of the vote has waned as Maricopa County's population has become more Latino, he held on to his post in 2008 by a comfortable 13-point margin. He claims to be “America’s Toughest Sheriff," but some number crunching finds that his heavy hands are not clamping down on real problems. In fact, while violent crime is down across many other Southern Arizona jurisdictions, it has risen in Sheriff Joe’s.

Not that one would ever know it based on his defiantly self-righteous public face, but the sheriff has recently come under increased scrutiny. Late last year, the Justice Department concluded, after a three-year investigation, that his department had unfairly targeted Latinos. He now faces an additional federal grand jury probe concerning abuses of power.

Sheriff Joe has chosen to respond to this attention, and particularly his moment in the (Valley of the) Sun during the Arizona debate and primary, in the most stereotypically Sheriff Joe sort of way. He has called a press conference for today in which he will reveal the preliminary results of an investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate.

“America’s Toughest Sheriff” may have been somewhat of a fringe figure at first, but the Republican party orthodoxy regarding immigration and law enforcement has moved toward him. Putting low-level criminals or “gang members” in tents, as Joe and Jerry are/were wont to do, has nothing to do with rehabilitation. Rather, it's about humiliation, and more importantly, segregation.

Newt Gingrich responding to a question asking if he was offending black people by doubling down on his offending of black people and Rick Santorum thinking the idea of every (read: including racial minorities) American going to college as snobbery is directly from the Sheriff Joe playbook. Sheriff Joe helped foster the climate in which the xenophobic State Bill 1070, practically requiring anyone who could be suspected of being an immigrant (read: Latino) to carry documentation, would pass. The political appeal of Sheriff Joe, as a white figure of authority who might put black and brown people “in their place," was and remains strong to the “take our country back" voters who fear the changing palette of the American landscape.

Sheriff Joe has now taken his politics to their logical conclusion and embraced birtherism. This is a man who, while dealing with an ongoing probe and having had the Department of Justice conclude he was guilty of racial bias, has chosen to defend the content of his character by attacking the color of someone else’s skin.

Staring at a financial house of cards that he knew was bound to collapse and wreak economic havoc on his employees and clients, Jerry Airola too stood in his glass house and threw stones at “gang members."

Facing accusations after comments he had made of being, at best, racially insensitive, Newt Gingrich defended himself by implying African-Americans have a substandard work ethic.

For the Joes, Jerrys and Newts of the world, morality and justice seem to be little more complex than complexion.

 

Reach Staff Columnist Matt Pressberg here.