By Edmund L. Andrews

It isn’t easy for a tiny outpost of the GOP to make itself into a statewide laughingstock, but the Douglas County Republican Party seems determined to make it happen.

Party apparatchiks have selected Joe Arpaio, the disgraced former sheriff and convicted criminal from Arizona, to be the keynote speaker at their annual Lincoln-Reagan fundraising bash on Feb. 18.

If you aren’t up to speed on Arpaio, you can read up on his sordid history here, here and here. The short version is this: Arpaio has a well-documented history of illegal racial profiling, chronic violations of civil rights and all-around hate-mongering.

In his war on undocumented immigrants, Arpaio and his deputies systematically targeted and arrested Latinos – and anyone else who looked like a possible immigrant – in traffic stops, workplace raids and neighborhood sweeps. He incarcerated legions of people at his “Tent City” in the Arizona desert, where detainees suffered in temperatures as high as 130 degrees. A federal court in Arizona ruled that many of his practices were illegal. When Arpaio ignored a court order to clean up his act, another federal judge found him guilty last May of criminal contempt of court. If President Trump hadn’t pardoned him, Arpaio might well be behind bars right now.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the aging lizard still promotes the long-disproven “birther” lie that President Obama was born in Kenya. Even Trump, the most famous birther of them all, finally admitted that the charge was bogus. Not Arpaio: Just last month, he declared on TV that Obama’s birth certificate is “phony.”

Ok, it’s a free country, and a creep is free to spew whatever vile drivel he wants. If he wants to run for the Senate in Arizona, good luck with that.

The real question for me is this: Why on earth are Douglas County Republican leaders bent on bringing shame down on their (and my) county? Why are they hitching their star to a reviled bigot with a rap sheet? Is this some new version of “Law and Order?”

This is a beautiful and peaceful place, with Lake Tahoe on one side and the Carson Valley on the other. It’s not at all a place of hatemongers. The last thing that anybody here should want to do is make us the poster-child for ignorance and intolerance.

The sniveling justifications for all this have been laughable.

The chairman of the Douglas County Republicans, Dick Schwabe, told the Reno Gazette Journal that “many people have been convicted of misdemeanors.”

 Well, sure. But Arpaio didn’t get a parking ticket. He’s guilty of criminal contempt of court. As the judge noted, he willfully ignored the earlier court order that was handed down after a lengthy trial over extremely important civil rights violations.

Another local Republican, a former member of the central committee, recently defended Arpaio as “doing his duty to interpose for the people of his country against an unconstitutional presidential order.” I guess he meant President Obama’s policy of not chasing undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed other crimes.

Give me a break. Arpaio didn’t get in trouble for upholding the law. He got in trouble for breaking the law, and then thumbing his nose at the courts.

Here’s the real point, though: We can do better than this.

I know for a fact that many of my Republican friends here are deeply embarrassed and unhappy, even if very few are speaking out publicly. Many are as mystified as I am that the gala organizers came up with a speaker who revolts them. (Sadly, though, tickets for the Arpaio Rogue’s Dinner sold out almost immediately.)

Douglas County Republican leaders aren’t just bringing shame on themselves. They’re bringing shame on my entire county, including all the genuinely decent Republicans who have no desire whatsoever to coddle a criminal.

I would hope that people of integrity, regardless of their political affiliation, would let others know that most of us are better than this. Speak out in whatever way seems best to you. Talk to your friends; call up party officials; write letters to the editor; join the protests that will surely take place.

It seems clear that the GOP organizers aren’t about to change their plans, and that’s their right. But to them, my message is simple: Shame on you.

Edmund Andrews is a former journalist and political activist who lives in Douglas County. Reach him at [email protected]