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Rick Romley - The Only Grown Up in the Room
The following column ran in this Sunday's Arizona Republic:
by E. J. Montini, Columnist - Jul. 11, 2010
I was wrong in April when I said that Rick Romley was the last grown-up to be elected in Maricopa County.
In just the few months since then politicians statewide on every level have proven beyond any doubt that Romley was the last grown-up elected anywhere in Arizona.
Romley left the job of Maricopa County attorney in 2004 after 16 years in office and came back recently as the appointed replacement for Andrew Thomas, who resigned to run for state attorney general.
When I asked Romley in April how he would approach his old office during these contentious times he told me, "I'm here to try to help out, to try to create some stabilization, to calm the waters and go back to do the work for the public."
Now that he's been on the job for a few months, I got back in touch with him to see how it's going.
"It's extraordinarily different than it was when I left office," Romley said. "And not in a good way. We have to try to put some things aside and work together. To find some common ground rather than go to the polarized ends and yell things at each other like, 'You're weak on immigration' or 'You're a racist.' That's not the way to go."
Romley is running to get his old job back while trying to do the job. It's not easy - perhaps not even possible - to balance the political and the practical. But that's what he's trying to do.
"I didn't expect the emotionalism that exists these days," he said. "Look, SB 1070 passed and I have a duty to enforce it. I notified law enforcement of the legal requirements that are necessary to prove these cases.
"But we also should ask how much of an impact this law is going to have. Yes, there are people who are here illegally. But we have done a statistical analysis since I got here and over 96 percent of the people who have been convicted in the past four years (under Thomas' strategy of prosecuting border crossers for participating in the conspiracy to smuggle themselves into the country) have no criminal record other than being here. They aren't the ones selling drugs to our kids.
"I would like to get things to the point where we have a reasonable debate about this. We have limited resources. We need to focus on the worst of the worst. I believe there is a false expectation that the public has that SB 1070 is going to be a miracle cure."
Look at the argument this way: If a police agency were using more of its resources to go after shoplifters rather than murderers or gang bangers there would an enormous public outcry.
"But when you apply that same logic to illegal immigration it doesn't get through," Romley said. "It's almost like the fog of war. There is this confusion out there. We are at the beginning stages of a fight and it takes time to focus."
He doesn't expect that to happen before the November general election. Not with every candidate for every political office promising to be tougher on immigration than the next candidate.
"I think we can overcome this by doing what we did after the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi," Romley said. Sodhi was an innocent Sikh man from India who was shot to death outside his Mesa gas station four days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Romley's office prosecuted the killer, who now is on death row.
"We worked hard to bring the community together after that," Romley said. "I felt that we had to work collectively. And we did it. We stood together. I think that is the way that we have to approach this issue. We have to bring everyone together, the Hispanic community, all of us, and work this out."
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