President Trump’s visit to Phoenix on Tuesday could be monumental — pardon the pun.
Trump will likely make some moves here that change our political picture into next year.
Here are a few things to look for:
1. Arpaio pardon
Trump has said he is considering pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio after his conviction for criminal contempt of court.
“I am seriously considering a pardon for Sheriff Arpaio,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. “He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He’s a great American patriot and I hate to see what has happened to him.”
Arpaio was convicted of contempt for allowing his department to continue doing immigration sweeps even after a federal judge had ordered him to stop because of illegal profiling of Latinos. A pardon would wipe away that conviction and his sentence for the crime, which hasn’t been handed down yet.
An Arpaio pardon would enrage many Latinos and Democrats, but it would please Trump’s existing supporters, whom Trump has catered to persistently during his presidency.
2. Senate endorsement
On Thursday, Trump tweeted, “Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He’s toxic!”
Sen. Flake, of course, has rhetorically taken on Trump in a new book, “Conscience of a Conservative,” and an interview tour, although he almost always votes with Trump.
But Ward, who lost handily to Sen. John McCain in the 2016 GOP primary, is not the only candidate Trump might endorse. State Treasurer Jeff DeWit was a major figure in Trump’s presidential campaign, with the title of chief operating officer and a frequent role defending Trump on TV.
Robert Graham, the former chair of the state GOP, is also a contender. He met with Chris Bannon, a Tucsonan who is the brother of presidential adviser Steve Bannon, this spring to discuss possible challengers to Flake, Politico reported.
3. Officeholders’ excuses
Rep. Martha McSally, who has kept an arm’s length from Trump without rejecting him openly, has said she has a scheduling conflict and will be in Fort Huachuca, not at the Trump rally. Gov. Doug Ducey has not said whether he will attend, which if you think about it is pretty startling, considering Trump is a sitting Republican president. If Ducey doesn’t attend, his reason should be interesting.
It would be shocking if Sens. McCain or Flake attended, since they are both critics of Trump and are apparently loathed by the president. But it wouldn’t be surprising if any of the other four Republican members of the U.S. House from Arizona attended.
4. Big protests
While Trump is bound to animate his opponents anywhere he goes, there is a special salience to Trump’s potential pardon of Arpaio. It would likely enrage the former sheriff’s many critics and inflame protests.
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the Tucson Democrat, told me he would have gone to join protests against Trump in any case, but the prospect of a pardon made him want to help lead protests.
“We can’t allow this to happen without having an appropriate nonviolent peaceful response,” he said.
He noted that Phoenix officials appear to be trying to keep attendees and protesters separate. That could help keep the protests peaceful.
Facebook battles
Two Facebook flare-ups have stirred Pima County politics in recent weeks, as my colleague Murphy Woodhouse has reported, and the responses to them are telling. In one case, county communications-office employee Jason Ground encouraged members of a private Facebook group to show up to a county board meeting and challenge Supervisor Ally Miller. Actually, “shove her words down her throat” is what he said before adding “f*** her.”
Then, a couple of weeks later and just a few hours after a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Miller herself hit “enter” on a controversial Facebook post: “I’m sick and tired of being hit for being white... It is all about making us feel like we need to apologize. I am WHITE — and proud of it! No apologies necessary.”
Supervisor Steve Christy, Miller’s fellow Republican on the board, responded indignantly to Ground’s post, saying it was “deplorable, egregious and reprehensible” and that Ground should be “subject to every facet of the county’s disciplinary process.” When it came to Miller’s post, though, Christy did not object to its content or timing but simply called it “fodder” for Miller’s detractors.
The board’s Democrats reacted the opposite way. Supervisors Ramon Valadez, Richard Elías and Sharon Bronson called on Miller to apologize for her post, a topic that likely will be entertained at this Monday’s board meeting. But they said nothing about the post by Ground, for which he received a letter of reprimand.
Big loss for cities
The fact that Tucson will now have to sell seized guns instead of destroying them isn’t actually that big a deal. It’s just a rather minor result of Tucson’s losing a case at the Arizona Supreme Court.
The bigger outcome of the decision against Tucson on Thursday is that the Legislature’s dictatorship over smaller jurisdictions has been cemented. As you’ll know if you follow the Legislature, that state body has made a habit of passing laws that pre-empt local city and county ordinances.
When Arizona cities passed ordinances banning or regulating plastic bags, for example, the Legislature passed a state law that prohibited banning bags. Last year, the Legislature passed the granddaddy of all pre-emption bills: SB 1487 allowed any individual legislator to report a city ordinance to the state attorney general. If the AG finds it violates state law, the city has 30 days to fix the problem or face massive financial penalties.
This would make sense if cities were trying, for example, to permit murder and fraud within their borders. But what really is happening is that the cities are making political decisions that conform to their residents’ wishes but violate the opinions of legislators.
Democratic city councils and county boards take stands that Republican legislators disagree with, and the legislators overrule the cities and counties even on issues where there is no compelling state interest, such as plastic bags.
Expect them to do this more, not because it’s right but because they can.
Friese still exploring
U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a Phoenix Democrat, has not moved decisively enough to drive state Rep. Randy Friese, a Tucson Democrat, from next year’s U.S. Senate race.
Sinema has confirmed she is considering running for Flake’s seat but hasn’t gone further than that. While she’s thinking about it, Friese is continuing to drum up support for a possible run for the same U.S. Senate seat.
“I will need a lot more declarative actions and statements from her before I’d consider rolling back,” Friese told me Thursday.
In other words, he’s not going to consider backing out until she says for sure that she’s jumping in.
