There is something you can do right now…you will find attached an invitation to an event scheduled for Dec. 5, featuring Joe Arpaio, “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” “Sheriff Joe” has very graciously agreed to raise funds for the “Freedom In Truth Trust.” The FIT Trust is the fund that was established to help us satisfy legal debts incurred during the 2006 campaign. You can read more about it at http://www.jdhayworth.com/fit-trust.html

You may not live in Arizona…but no matter where you call home, would you respond to the attached invitation and please send a contribution to the FIT Trust?

That would certainly be a factor in the decision we will make at the “Hayworth Hacienda!”

The irony of using the Spanish word in an appeal for a possible immigration-focused Senate bid is really something.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Arizona voters finds Arpaio, famed for his crackdowns on illegal immigrants, leading Goddard, the state’s current attorney general, by 12 points – 51% to 39%. Seven percent (7%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

According to the survey, Goddard leads Republican Gov. Jan Brewer by a comfortable nine-point margin, and Goddard is virtually tied with State Treasurer Dean Martin. Brewer is the only one of the possible candidates who is officially in the race.

With numbers like this, could Arpaio be enticed to run for governor? And could he win?

Rumors have been swirling in Arizona for the past few months that Arpaio is mulling a gubernatorial bid, fueled by his antipathy for Goddard. The 77-year-old Arpaio was first elected in 1992, and he won re-election in 2008 by a commanding 13-point margin, with 55 percent of the vote. During that race, Arpaio raised more than $600,000 — an eye-popping sum for a countywide election. Effectively a modern-day political boss, “Sheriff Joe” is well-known for his heavy-handed tactics to combat illegal immigration and bragging about the harsh conditions in county detention facilities. He has launched investigations of numerous political opponents, including Goddard, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, the Phoenix New Times and the Maricopa County Superior Court.

While Arpaio remains extremely popular in Maricopa County — the home of Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe accounts for approximately 61 percent of Arizona’s population — Goddard has already proven himself in statewide races, having been elected attorney general in 2002, and re-elected in 2006 with 60 percent of the vote (pdf). A poll released last month by the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism and KAET found Arpaio had a 61 percent approval rating among Maricopa County voters, while the same survey found 55 percent of Arizona voters approve of Goddard’s performance. Arizona has been trending Democratic in recent years, but a Gallup poll from January found party identification in the state was essentially a dead heat, and one would be hard-pressed to find anybody in Arizona without a strong opinion about Arpaio.

All of this seems to confirm Rasmussen’s findings: If Arpaio got into the race against Goddard, he would stand a pretty good chance of winning. It’s also a safe bet that Arpaio would raise a lot of money from out-of-state illegal immigration opponents.

The Obama administration has already clashed with Arpaio on a couple of occasions. In March, the Justice Department announced it was opening an investigation into allegations of racial profiling and unlawful searches and seizures, and last month Arpaio was stripped of his authority to enforce federal immigration laws under the controversial 287(g) program.

But if the Justice Department thought Arpaio was a handful as sheriff of Maricopa County, just imagine what he could do with control of the state’s Department of Public Safety, and Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislature.

(Via Eric Kleefeld)

This post has been updated.

It’s a surprising poll because only 24 percent of state Republicans have a negative view of McCain. He’s suffering from a backlash against everyone currently in Washington. And it’s been two years since McCain broke with the GOP base and backed comprehensive immigration reform. If that comes up again in 2010, as many expect it to, McCain could face real problems with Arizona voters.

Curiously, the meeting was not listed on the vice president’s schedule. But Arpaio told the Phoenix Business Journal that he’d said to Biden in their meeting that he needs more deputies and resources for his law enforcement unit.

Arpaio’s law enforcement actions, however, have not always gone over well with the Obama administration. The Arizona sheriff is under official investigation for civil rights violations, and just recently, the Department of Homeland Security revoked some of his powers to enforce federal immigration laws under the 287(g) program.

Arpaio has insisted that he has all the powers he needs to arrest illegal immigrants anyway, and vowed not to let up on his much-publicized efforts to crack down on them.

There’s going to be a lot of Republican focus on this Gallup Poll today, which shows Democrats losing by four points to Republicans in the generic ballot test due to independents running away from them. The lessons of election night 2009, though, seem to be a mix of Democratic news and overall voter distrust of their political system. Anti-tax measures, spending cap reforms, Glenn Beck-backed congressional candidates, and county/city officials whom no one saw as being in any danger — all of them suffered. All of this occurred with relatively low turnout–the angriest, most cynical voters were the most interested in voting.

The operation was supposed to be part of an ICE program to deport dangerous illegal immigrants who had previously been ordered deported and had prior criminal records, reports The Arizona Republic. But of the 80 people arrested, only six had prior criminal histories, and only two of those were fugitives. According to the ACLU, “at least 23 of the 80 arrests were for people that ICE calls ‘incidentals’ — people who happened to be present at a residence or workplace when authorities showed up looking for someone else.”

This afternoon, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, who’s known for encouraging local law enforcement to search out illegal immigrants and is under federal investigation for racial profiling as a result, tweeted that “the ACLU doesn’t want ICE arresting illegals either,” with a link to the Arizona Republic story.

On Tuesday afternoon, Jack MacIntyre, a deputy chief with the sheriff’s office, told me the ruling was “an instance of pretty rank judicial activism,” adding that “it is very very likely we will appeal.”

The way the sheriff’s office looks at it, he said, the judge’s order (which was read to the court and is not yet available in print) was “not only not leveling the playing field for persons seeking abortion, but setting them up as a preferential category ahead of anyone else seeking transport for medical procedures.”

That’s because Maricopa County doesn’t provide free transportation for anyone who wants medical assistance outside the prison clinic, he said.

“We’re continuing to charge anyone else for medical transports,” he said. “We did that recently for someone from Oklahoma who had to be tested and have bone marrow drawn because his sister had an advanced case of leukemia. He had to be tested twice and have bone marrow extracted and implanted in his sister. We charged in advance for transport and security costs,” said MacIntyre. “We do the same thing for people getting eyeglasses or dentures.”

In fact, the county is required to provide transportation for all medically necessary treatments, because prisoners have a constitutional right to medical care. But there’s no right to cosmetic dentistry or other elective procedures, so the county can charge pre-payment for transportation to those.

The ACLU had challenged the charges in connection with the abortion procedures because there is a constitutional right to abortion. The same court had already held that the sheriff cannot obstruct that right.

“The crux of the case was that for indigent women who couldn’t afford this, and couldn’t get money from friends, or from charitable organizations, she would likely be forced to carry to term,”explained ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri, who argued the case in Arizona today. “The defendants conceded that.”

But MacIntyre had another objection, which is that there was no actual woman involved in this case, at least not right now. When the ACLU initially filed its lawsuit in 2004, it was on behalf of a woman who’d been denied access to an abortion because she could not afford the transportation and security costs. A nonprofit organization eventually paid the costs for her, but the issue remained and the case continued.

In 2005, the court ruled that the county policy was unconstitutional, and issued an injunction to prevent the county from enforcing it against anyone else. According to Amiri, the judge today ruled that the pre-payment policy was a violation of that earlier court order. Under Arizona law, it didn’t matter whether an actual woman was being denied the ability to obtain an abortion at this moment, she said. What’s more, “since this issue is certain to recur there’s no sense in not deciding it now. Also, when a woman does need an abortion, time will be of the essence, and any delay in obtaining an abortion can increase risks to her health.”

The judge apparently agreed that that was good enough reason to rule on the issue. But that still didn’t convince the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“It really is setting up one group as a special group, and it directly impacts the taxpayers who Arpaio tries to steward as best as possible by not spending their money foolishly, trying as much as possible to run his organization on as tight a budget as possible,” said MacIntyre.

What’s more, if the woman who initially was denied an abortion because she couldn’t afford it, back in 2004, were in the court today, he added “we wouldn’t even be discussing it,” said Macintyre. “That person was an illegal alien, and there’s a federal law that prevents us from extending credit to an illegal alien.”

Actually, says Amiri, the federal statute prevents illegal immigrants from receiving welfare benefits. And transportation to gain access to a constitutionally protected abortion is not legally considered a form of welfare benefits.

As I explained yesterday, Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who’s under investigation by the Justice Department for civil rights violations, had been requiring female prisoners in his jurisdiction to pay in advance all the costs associated with getting to a health clinic to obtain an abortion — specifically, transportation and security costs. The costs were $300 per day, and so could reach $900 if complications required the patient to stay at the clinic for three days. The costs could be difficult for many women in prison to come up with at all, let alone on short notice. And if they couldn’t get the money, they couldn’t obtain an abortion at all.

So the ACLU, which had sued Arpaio back in 2005 for denying women the right to get an abortion in his county at all without a court order, took him to court over the latest obstacles he’d imposed.

The hearing was this morning, and ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri, who argued the case, notified me that the judge ruled from the bench in the ACLU’s favor.  I’ll post more details and a copy of the order as soon as I get it.

This post has been updated.

Although Arpaio hasn’t exactly forbidden the women from getting abortion care, he has imposed a new requirement that the women pre-pay for transportation and security costs before being allowed to get medical care. The ACLU claims in its brief to the Arizona Superior Court that the requirement is unconstitutional, and violates a 2005 court order that Arpaio provide inmates access to abortions.

ACLU lawyers will be in an Arizona court on Tuesday asking the court to stop Arpaio from charging the women up to $600 before accessing abortion services.

Even if the sheriff and his deputies can’t arrest anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant on the street, they can still check the immigration status of everyone in Maricopa County’s jails and turn them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. The Department of Justice is separately investigating Arpaio for allegedly abusing his authority by conducting unconstitutional searches and engaging in racial profiling.

DHS has promised to review all 287(g) agreements with individual counties, even as it has expanded the number of those agreements in effect.