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Newly elected Maricopa officials should focus on their jobs, not their personas

Adrian Fontes and Paul Penzone have big shoes to fill, here's how they can do it

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain is interviewed by Cronkite School professor Jeff Cunningham at the Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016.
Arizona Republican Senator John McCain is interviewed by Cronkite School professor Jeff Cunningham at the Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016.

Recently, Maricopa county elected a new sheriff and a new county recorder, ousting two of our public servants who had held their offices for decades.

The self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America” had a great run — Joe Arpaio took office in 1993 and held that position for nearly 25 years. His time was filled with plenty of controversy, but his support was nationwide. Arpaio raised nearly $10 million in the 2016 election campaign season, according to the Arizona Republic, but the money wasn’t enough.

County Recorder Helen Purcell had an even longer run, serving Maricopa County since 1989. Unlike Arpaio, Purcell avoided major public criticism until the 2015 presidential primary election. Purcell and her department dropped the number of polling places in 2015, leading to long lines that Governor Ducey called unacceptable.

Sheriff-elect Penzone’s job is to be less ostentatious than Sheriff Arpaio was. Voters showed overwhelmingly that they were finally tired of “America’s toughest sheriff” and done with him using his power to advance his personal agenda. Arpaio lost by nearly 150,000 votes, the voting margin being nearly 13 percent in favor of Penzone.

As sheriff, the job is to enforce the law. The keyword is “enforce." If Penzone has a personal opinion about what the sheriff should and should not do, he can petition to the state legislature; he cannot take it into his own hands. Although this position is less partisan than a legislature or other members of the executive branch, the party politics will still come into play.

Ian Pardo, a Tempe resident and former employee of a statewide public office, said that Penzone’s job will be affected by party in part because of the difference between him and Arpaio.

“Depending on what Penzone does and what policies he enacts, I imagine there’s gonna be a big shift after Arpaio is out,” Pardo said. “There’s gonna be a lot of policy shakeups, you may see tent city dwindle quite a bit.”

For Penzone to keep his job, he must appeal to Republicans who prefer conservative ideologies, but didn’t like the way Arpaio handled himself. Penzone must be tough, even if he isn’t the toughest. If he can be a tough, honest and strong sheriff, his chances are good.

Penzone defeats Arpaio via CNN

“The amount of people that the sheriff arrests may go down," Pardo said. "We’ll see. That may play a bigger part for a lot of Republicans … who may see Penzone as soft.”

Pardo said that Penzone has always painted himself as a lawman, not the world’s toughest sheriff. This should play into Penzone’s favor. Maricopa is looking for a sheriff who will obey the law, unlike Arpaio who is currently being charged with contempt of court.

“I think he’ll be rolling back a lot of the Arpaio rhetoric and seeing what he can do to just make sure that the sheriff’s office works ­— not just for voting citizens, but those that are illegal in this country and can’t vote,” Pardo said. “He’s made it very clear that he wants to be a fair but just man, no matter what the case is.”

For Adrian Fontes, the former marine who unseated Purcell, his job is sweet and simple – make voting easy.

On his website, Fontes writes that he wants to “determine the proper number of polling places needed in our county so that no citizen is denied the right to vote by long lines extending into the wee hours of the morning.” Fontes addresses the exact reason Purcell lost her job. Other initiatives like restarting the Kids Voting program and sponsoring voter registration are great and should be seen through.

Fontes speaks with the Arizona Republic post election

For Fontes to keep his job, he only needs to do one thing – make voters forget he exists. If I never hear Fontes’ name in the news, that’s probably a good sign. Think of Fontes as the captain of a plane, if my news contemporaries and I are talking about him, it’s likely because something went wrong.

“The county recorder position is such that it really doesn’t matter what party you are, typically it’s someone who just is good at bookkeeping who runs for that position,” Pardo said. “Typically, with county recorder, whoever holds that position holds it for a good long time because usually the job runs itself. You have to mess up really bad to get kicked out.”

For both jobs, the request is to simplify. Get back to the core requirements of the job and focus solely on that. Don’t become larger than life. Don’t become the news story. 


Reach the columnist at maatenci@asu.edu or follow @mitchellatencio on Twitter.

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Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.

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