Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio In Tight Arizona Primary For Old Job

PHOENIX — Joe Arpaio, the 88-year-old former Maricopa County sheriff who was convicted of criminal contempt for racially profiling immigrants in patrols and then pardoned by President Donald Trump, remains locked in a tight Republican primary race to win back his old job.

With votes in Tuesday's primary elections still being counted, Arpaio trails his former second-in-command, Jerry Sheridan, by fewer than 600 votes. Both men want to take on Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone in the Nov. 3 general election. Penzone, who cruised to victory four years ago, ran uncontested for his party's nomination.

A third candidate, longtime police veteran Mike Crawford, was in a distant third Wednesday morning, trailing Sheridan by about 39,000 votes.

This is the second political comeback bid for polarizing former county sheriff, who bills himself as "America's toughest sheriff." Arpaio unsuccessfully campaigned for the U.S. Senate in 2018.

Against a backdrop of calls for police reform nationwide, Arpaio has vowed to bring back the controversial policies that the courts have either deemed illegal or Penzone has done away with — including immigration patrols and a complex of jail tents .

"I'm telling you right now: I am going to do 90 percent of what I did during my 24 years," Arpaio told The Associated Press. "That's the way it's going to be."

Arpaio and Sheridan were forced out of the agency amid heavy criticism for disobeying a judge's order 2011 to stop Arpaio's traffic patrols that targeted immigrants.

Sheridan, who wasn't charged with criminal contempt, has attempted to distance himself from Arpaio, telling The AP that he "would argue with him when I disagreed with him."

"A lot of the time he would listen to what I said," Sheridan said. "Other times he would brush me off. I am not Joe Arpaio."

Over the last seven years, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, the largest sheriff's office in the country with 33,000 employees, has undergone a court-ordered overhaul after a judge ruled sheriff's deputies had racially profiled Latinos in Arpaio's immigration patrols. The civil contempt findings against Arpaio and Sheridan were made in the profiling case. Sheridan wasn't charged with criminal contempt, and said he was unaware of the highly publicized court order and didn't run the unit that carried out the immigration patrols.

Arpaio's political liabilities have been piling up for years: $147 million in taxpayer-funded legal bills, a failure to investigate more than 400 sex-crimes complaints made to the office and launching criminal investigations against judges, politicians and others who were at odds with him.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.