Can Trump's Arpaio Pardon Flip Arizona?

[DonViejo]

BY MARIA BUSTILLOS, CAPITAL & MAIN ON 8/31/17 AT 9:20 AM

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political and social issues.

Donald Trump issued his first pardon last Friday, to Joe Arpaio, expunging the former Maricopa County sheriff’s federal conviction on criminal contempt charges relating to illegal racial profiling. It would not be surprising, considering Trump’s polarizing rhetoric on August 22 at a Phoenix rally, if many Arizonans consider the Arpaio pardon “a slap in the face,” as Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton called it. The pardon has only made it harder for moderate Republicans to halt or even slow Arizona’s accelerating blueward political shift—a shift that exploded last year when Latino voters, angered by both Arpaio’s racist policies and passage of an anti-immigrant law, joined with labor and community advocates to challenge the encrusted status quo through activist coalitions.

The once immensely popular Arpaio has become Kryptonite to Republicans in his own state. Challenger Paul Penzone beat him 56 percent to 44 percent in the sheriff’s race last November, denying Arpaio a seventh term. In that election Trump won Arizona by a measly 3.5 percent, in comparison with the 12 percent margin of victory enjoyed by Mitt Romney against Barack Obama in 2012. An August High Ground poll found that 55 percent of Arizonans disapprove of Trump’s job performance.

"For a president that claims to be a rule of law president, he's done the opposite. He ignored what this court behind us has said and he pardoned a criminal," said Carlos Garcia, the director of Puente, a grassroots migrant justice organization, after the pardon’s announcement. Puente, along with immigrant-rights activists and organizers representing Progress Now Arizona, Promise Arizona and the Center for Neighborhood Leadership, had gathered outside the Phoenix courthouse for a news conference, flanked by giant inflatable Trump and Arpaio balloons—the latter “dressed” in prison stripes, like the ones Arpaio infamously made his own inmates wear.

On Tuesday, a group of lawyers met on the lawn of the same courthouse to protest the pardon, the Phoenix New Times reported. Former Arizona attorney general Grant Woods, a Republican, said that the pardon did not reflect conservative values. “There is no more powerful act of government than to deprive someone of their liberty. When people do that based upon the color of someone’s skin, there isn’t a bigger outrage that could be in this country.” Others present objected to Trump’s apparent disdain for the authority of the court system. “When you see people breaking the law and getting away with it, it hurts the whole legal system,” said criminal defense attorney Benjamin Taylor.

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http://www.newsweek.com/trump-arpaio-pardon-arizona-democrats-657362

[Wounded Bear]

1. You'd think it would help our cause...nt

[Adrahil]

2. Only if our folks VOTE.

Through family, I know some Trumplicans in AZ.

They LOVE Arpaio. Yes, they are digusting, racist, white supremacist pieces of shit. But they vote in every. Goddamed. Election.

[StevieM]

3. We had Arizona won in 2016. Comey flipped it, along with many other states. (eom)

[MineralMan]

4. Not by itself, I think.

Instead, we need the same thing we need everywhere: More Democrats going to the polls than Republicans. That's the only equation that works everywhere.

[muntrv]

5. GOTV, my friends.