Joe Arpaio Pardon Roils Arizona Politics As Former Sheriff Shows No Remorse, Threatens McCain

Joe Arpaio, the once-convicted former sheriff of Maricopa County, whose pardon by President Trump on Friday has drawn criticism from top Republicans in the country, has launched an attack on uJohn McCain, a war hero and the state's senior senator who is battling brain cancer.

"It's probably payback time," Arpaio said of McCain in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "He ought to get on board and support the president."

There's no love lost between McCain and Arpaio. The then-sheriff campaigned for other Republicans against McCain in 2000 and 2008 when the senator sought the Republican nomination for president.

On Friday, as the word of the pardon spread, McCain put out a statement saying it brought into question the president's credibility.

That sent longtime Trump ally Roger Stone to Twitter to viciously attack the Arizona senator.

While presidential pardons usually come after the judicial process runs its course, an application is made and remorse is shown, none of those were the case with the Arpaio pardon. (For more local news, subscribe to the Phoenix Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. For more information and updates on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch.)

The former sheriff - who was overwhelmingly voted out of office last year and who once compared his tent city prison to a "concentration camp" - has not only shown no remorse, he has said he plans to go after people, with McCain just being one of his targets.

Lawmakers And Others React To Trump's Pardon Of Joe Arpaio

"I’m going to do a news conference early next week and get to the bottom of this and show the abuse of the judicial system and politics," Arpaio told Fox talk show host Sean Hannity on Friday.

"I’m not going down without trying to defend myself, to all those people that don't like what I’ve done."

Meanwhile, the state's junior senator - Jeff Flake, a frequent target of Trump's ire - put out a statement that while slightly more tempered than McCain's was nonetheless critical.

When Trump appeared in Phoenix at a campaign rally last week, he met with several potential challengers to Flake and tweeted his support for Kelli Ward, one of the people who plan to challenge Flake in the Republican primary next year.

Ward grabbed nearly 40 percent when she ran in the primary against McCain last year.

The problem is that the Trump campaign has not been consistent on who to support against Flake.

While the president has Tweeted his support for her, and Hannity gave her a vote of support on his radio show, Arizona Republicans have expressed doubts about her ability to defeat Flake.

As a result, she was not one of the potential candidates who met with Trump at last week's rally.

Trump has told Republicans in Arizona that he would spend $10 million of his own money to help defeat Flake.

The question being raised by political observers is will Trump's pardon of Arpaio help - or actually hurt - Republican chances in the state next year?

While Arizona is considered a reliably Red state, Trump barely won there last year, defeating Hillary Clinton by a mere 3.5 percent. In Maricopa County, where Arpaio was sheriff, Trump only outpaced Clinton by 3.4 percent.

At the same time, Democrat Paul Penzone defeated Arpaio by 12 percentage points, grabbing 56 percent of the vote.

The math says that a lot of the people who voted for Trump in Maricopa County also pointedly voted to cast Arpaio out of office, leaving open the question of who the pardon is supposed to appeal to in Arizona.

Krysten Sinema, a Democrat who represents the state's Ninth District and is expected to challenge Flake - or whomever the Republicans nominate - next year quickly seized on the pardon.

All the turmoil of the past couple of weeks has led the political prognostication website of noted University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato to change its view of the Arizona race from "leans Republican" to "toss up."

File photo of Arpaio campaigning with Trump in 2016 via Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images