Heat City

Arizona’s state police force, the Department of Public Safety, went into something of a panic on Thursday night after a group of brazen hackers broke into the email accounts of a handful of officers and leaked secret law enforcement documents to the world.

The agency shut down its own website, froze parts of its email system and launched an investigation to try to figure out how bad the breach was and how it happened.

Yet in all the posturing and fist-pounding state officials did in the hours that followed, the question of whether Arizona has a strategy to deal with future attacks seemed to be lost in the noise.

Instead, the focus was on the seven officers, some of whom had their names, home addresses, cell phone numbers, passwords and personal financial information posted on the internet.

Joe Arpaio

Even as Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces the most intense scrutiny of his career from federal investigators, local authorities and his own men, records released Thursday show his 2012 re-election campaign is raising money at a faster pace than ever.

The Maricopa County sheriff hauled in more than $650,000 in less than six weeks, bringing his total grab to about $3.6 million since winning a fifth term in 2008, according to financial disclosures filed with the county elections department.

Dan Saban

He tried twice to unseat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and lost both times. But former Buckeye Police Chief Dan Saban is going to try again, saying Monday he believes he can pull off an upset in his third run for the office.

Saban told Heat City he gave the county notice of his campaign last week after being overwhelmed by calls to get into the 2012 race despite losses to Arpaio in 2008 and 2004. “I just got bombarded with emails,” Saban said.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking attorney general candidate Tom Horne with the ad above. Image from Re-Elect Joe Arpaio 2012

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has apparently changed his mind about a candidate he recently spent big bucks trying to defeat.

Last month, the Maricopa County sheriff was dishing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to attack Tom Horne, a Republican running in the Arizona attorney general’s race.

Bill Montgomery

Challenger Bill Montgomery pulled out a major upset in the Republican race for Maricopa County attorney on Tuesday by unseating one of the most familiar names in Arizona politics, Rick Romley.

Romley conceded the race within hours of the polls closing after unofficial results showed him down by almost 12 percent. Montgomery was leading 50 percent to 38 percent.

“In a way, it feels very satisfying to have hard work pay off like this,” Montgomery said in an interview afterward.

Rick Romley

Onetime presidential nominee Sen. John McCain weighed in on the fierce political feud in Maricopa County on Thursday by endorsing Rick Romley in the Republican primary for county prosecutor.

In an email to Romley’s supporters, the Arizona senator praised the interim county attorney as a prosecutor who has the wherewithal to help sort out a nearly two-year political feud that has plagued the local government here.

Joe Arpaio

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio continued dishing out huge amounts of campaign cash during June and July, surpassing the $1 million mark in total spending with more than two years still to go before he is up for reelection.

Arpaio, a Republican who has now raised nearly $3 million for his 2012 reelection campaign, spent just shy of $400,000 during those two months alone.

That brings his total campaign spending to $1.07 million since starting his fifth term in January 2009, according to reports he filed last week with the Maricopa County Elections Department.

Joe Arpaio

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is more than two years away from his next election, but he has spent more money campaigning in recent months than almost any candidate running in Arizona this year.

Only Sen. John McCain and wealthy gubernatorial candidate Buz Mills have spent more money. Both Republicans, however, are in red-hot primary races that go to the polls next month.

Arpaio, meanwhile, doesn’t face his next contest until the second half of 2012. Yet his most-recent financial disclosure shows the Republican sheriff has already spent $671,318 on his campaign.

The two Republicans hoping to become Arizona’s next attorney general will face off tonight in a rematch of what may have been the dirtiest debate in local politics so far this year.

Tom Horne and Andrew Thomas threw gallons of political mud at each other when they last faced off on June 3 in front of a Scottsdale tea party group. They largely ignored the moderator and instead tossed around accusations of lies, corruption and secret agendas for almost two hours.

The Mexican government formally joined the fight to stop Arizona’s new immigration law on Monday, telling a U.S. court the law “threatens to poison the well” of diplomacy between the two nations and exposes Mexican citizens to racial profiling by police.

In a 28-page brief filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, lawyers for Mexico said the creation of the law, widely known as S.B. 1070, “has been closely followed at the highest levels of the Mexican government and throughout Mexican society.”

The government said it believes the Arizona law, which among other things makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally, violates the U.S. Constitution. It asked the court to throw the law out entirely.

During a joint session of Congress last month, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon called the law a “terrible idea” that “ignores a reality.” But Monday’s so called friend of the court brief marks the first time Mexico has weighed in on the attempt to challenge the law in court.