What Arpaio's primary loss could tell us about Trump's future

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) Nothing much surprises Alfredo Gutierrez.

Widely viewed as the patriarch of Latino civil rights activism in Arizona, Gutierrez, now 74, helped Cesar Chavez organize farm workers in California lettuce fields and led immigrant rights marches through the streets of Phoenix. He’s battled institutional white supremacy in the American south-west for most of his life, and his memoir is a primer on the difficulty of eradicating something that is always present but sometimes hides itself.

It follows that Gutierrez was not surprised but “fascinated” when 88-year-old Joe Arpaio decided to run again for sheriff of Maricopa county, Arizona – a post Arpaio had held on to for 24 rocky years and lost four years ago amid national outrage over his abusive policing tactics and immigration crackdowns.

.....(snip).....

Arpaio’s defeat is viewed by national politicos as a possible indicator of Donald Trump’s diminishing popularity in Arizona, now a purple state in play in the presidential election.

But the race was so close it couldn’t be called for days. Arpaio lost by about 6,000 votes to his former right-hand man, a once blindly devoted chief deputy named Jerry Sheridan. ......(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/sheriff-joe-arpaio-arizona-primary-election-donald-trump

[still_one]

1. Unfortunately it was too close to be predictive of any