At the county and local levels there is little information on most candidates. So you can only really go by their webpages and the policies and views of issues that they write up. Sometimes there is some local news coverage, but not always. There is always the danger of voting for an actual Nazi or a true Communist. Such is voting on a local ballot.

County Attorney

The candidates are Republican Bill Montgomery and Libertarian Michael Kielsky. Montgomery was taped privately being disparaging of state institution Sherif Arpaio and soon afterwards stood with him to get his backing. This is most likely party and electoral mechanics making Montgomery look foolish. Arpaio is a doddering old fool. Since there are no Democratic candidates for this election, I think it is ok to say that publicly. Arpaio is eighty plus years old.

Montgomery also has Identity Theft as one of the major issues on his website. I suspect this is because Lifelock is a local company to Maricopa County. The rest of his issues look boiler plate national Republican platforms though with a touch more hyperbole than other local Republican candidates.

Michael Kielsky is a local attorney and Libertarian Candidate. The Libertarians tend to be solid on the idea of harm to an individual with fits closely to the Libertarian philosophy of freedom. Kielsky writes;

"Only the most serious offenders, who are a threat to victims and society, should be locked away, to protect us from their violence.For offenders who have caused harm but are no future threat, community supervision programs including probation, house-arrest, or assignment to a half-way house, each increase the offenders re-integration into a crime-free life, create opportunities for restitution, and permit greater access to work and career, family and community contact, and counseling resources, which each strengthen the offender's crime-free habits."

I am willing to give Kielsky a chance. I would be interested to see how effective such policies are at a county level.

Sheriff

The incumbent is octagenarian, birther and media circus Joe Arpaio. My mother used to say about Bob Hawke that he would turn up to a letter being opened. I think Arpaio is the same. The first strike against Arpaio is his posse to determine if Barack Obama's birth certificate is real. There are genuine issues with Obama's presidency; that is not one of them.

There are many reasons to vote against Arpaio but the main is, he is not very good at law enforcement;

Not all of Maricopa County is doing so badly -- just the parts under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office. The local police departments watching Maricopa's cities and towns are doing just fine. Phoenix, as Dickey notes, is a veritable success story, with a 14% drop in violent crime since 2002; other municipalities in the county, like Scottsdale (15% drop) and Mesa (30% drop), have been even more effective. It's just the unincorporated parts of the county -- the region under Arpaio's purportedly iron fist -- where violent crime has spiked so alarmingly.

The policy that Arpaio and Pearce were taking is called, "attrition through enforcement". Basically the idea is to make life so miserable that immigrants "voluntary comply" and deport themselves. I live in Scottsdale which has its own police force and does not use Arpaio for that. Though Scottsdale still uses Arpaio for managing the jails.

The Democratic candidate is Paul Penzone and the Independent is Mike Stauffer. Penzone is former policeman in Phoenix and it looks like he has been accused of beating his wife though there was no formal complaint. This news story has the most information I could find;

The ad reiterates allegations made by Penzone's then-estranged wife that Penzone had caused her to hit her forehead in March 2003 by pushing her on a doorway. Penzone said it was his wife who hit him in the head during the dispute with a hockey stick. No charges were ever filed.

Many Republicans who detest Arpaio are using this as an argument for Independent conservative candidate Mike Stauffer. He has youtube videos on pink underwear, tent city and SB1070. He comes off as reasonable and empirical. After reading Penzone's issues and Stauffer's - even though the latter's tend to be small 20 second youtube videos, I have to say Stauffer comes off the best. I think he is the best candidate. I have to vote for him. Hopefully this does not mean that Arpaio gets back in :(

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