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.

Arpaio, a fellow Republican who wanted instead to see his ally Andrew Thomas win the GOP nomination, paid an estimated $300,000 for television ads linking Horne to Democratic President Barack Obama, accusing him of unethical behavior and saying he favors amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Horne, however, ended up winning the nomination anyway. He beat Thomas by 899 votes.

Now, the sheriff has changed his tune about the Republican who could become the top law enforcement officer in Arizona if he beats Democrat Felecia Rotellini in November.

Arpaio announced Tuesday he is endorsing Horne for attorney general. He now says he believes Horne, the current superintendent of Arizona’s public schools, is “the best candidate for this important job.”

He also said he believes Horne opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, a full reversal of what he said in his attack ads.

The ads, which began airing in late July, were explicit about what Arpaio believed was Horne’s position on giving citizenship to illegal immigrants.

“Tom Horne favors amnesty for illegal immigrants, which would cost taxpayers billions,” the narrator said with a grainy black and white photo of the candidate plastered on the screen. The ad also said Horne had “falsely and unethically accused the sheriff of political retaliation.”

But when Horne released word of the endorsement on Tuesday, Arpaio’s was saying almost exactly the opposite thing.

“Tom Horne will enforce our laws against illegal immigration, will oppose amnesty and support SB 1070,” Arpaio’s written statement said. ” I strongly encourage voters throughout the state to join me in voting for Tom Horne for attorney general.”

Horne did not return a call seeking comment on the discrepancy. But he has denied in the past that he supports granting citizenship to illegal immigrants as part of any immigration reform plan.

In fact, Horne felt so strongly that his position was being skewed that he sued Arpaio two weeks before the Aug. 24 primary, saying the sheriff was breaking the law by airing the ads.

Horne said he believed the spots amounted to a back-door campaign contribution for his opponent. He estimated the sheriff spent $317,000 on them while contributions were limited to $140. “That is patently illegal,” Horne said in documents he filed Aug. 10.

The damage would be severe, Horne pleaded to the judge. He could lose the election because of it.

But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Buttrick declined to pull the ads from the air, saying they plainly also asked people to vote for Arpaio in his re-election campaign in 2012. Therefore, the judge said, the sheriff was free to attack Horne or anyone else. He threw out the lawsuit two days after it was filed.

Arpaio’s campaign manager, Chad Willems, told Heat City on Wednesday that Arpaio and Horne met sometime last week after a winner was declared in the GOP race. They sat down, talked and agreed to end their feud.

“Oftentimes in campaigns, there are misunderstandings,” Willems said. “And they got that cleared up.”

Willems pointed to a 2007 newspaper article in which Horne was quoted as saying he “would have no objection” to a plan giving citizenship to illegal immigrant students who graduate from high school and pass an extra test.

“There was some confusion in the air about the comments that Tom had made two, three years ago,” Willems said. But Horne and Arpaio now “see eye to eye on the issue.”

And as for the idea that Horne had accused the sheriff of political retaliation, Willems said: “They’ve aired that out, too.”

The primary battle between Horne and Arpaio’s ally Andrew Thomas was one of the nastiest in recent Arizona history. And the sheriff spent at least $400,000 in advertising during the primary, Willems said, though he wasn’t sure how much of that went to the ads involving Horne.

But that’s all water under the bridge now, Willems said. “He won. It couldn’t have hurt him that bad.”

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.

The challenger had the backing of the county’s powerful Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who not only endorsed him but spent big money on an ad campaign attacking Romley in the final weeks of the race. Elections officials on Tuesday determined some of the ads were illegal, but the ruling came down after the damage had already been done.

Montgomery said Arpaio’s overall support was a bigger key to his victory. But he acknowledged the attack ads were effective, too.

“To the extent that it educated voters about my opponent’s record, sure, it helped,” said Montgomery.

But the former deputy prosecutor, who used to work under Romley at the county attorney’s office, gave even more credit to the driving political force known as S.B. 1070, Arizona’s new immigration law.

Even though the most controversial parts of the law were blocked by a federal judge in July before they could take effect, Montgomery said the issue helped cement him as the tougher of the two candidates on illegal immigration.

Romley vowed to enforce the law, but he also urged Gov. Jan Brewer to veto it earlier this year, saying it was tearing apart the community.

With the win, Montgomery is all but guaranteed to be elected as the county’s next chief prosecutor in November. Democrats chose to stay out of the race this year. So his only opponent will be Libertarian Michael Kielsky, who has yet to raise any money or even launch a campaign website.

Romley, who had the support of a number of Democrats in Arizona, also put to rest any speculation that he would try to run as a write-in candidate in the fall.

“I just don’t see it,” he told Heat City. “We just move on. I’m just going to keep doing the job through November.”

It was the first loss of Romley’s long political career. He held the county attorney’s office for 16 years, winning his first election in 1988 and earning three more terms after that until he retired in 2004.

Then in April, after a five-year absence, he agreed to accept an appointment to his old seat when his successor, Andrew Thomas, resigned to run for state attorney general. Tuesday’s primary and November’s general elections are part of a special process to find someone to finish out the final two years of Thomas’ vacated term.

“It’s my first loss,” Romley said. “And it’s not easy here.”

During the five years he was gone from the office, Maricopa County’s government descended into a major feud among most of its high-ranking leaders.

On one side were Thomas, Arpaio and a handful of other agency heads. On the other side were the Board of Supervisors, the county’s chief administrator and several judges. The battle resulted in numerous lawsuits and criminal charges, and the fallout from it continues even now.

Romley was picked by the board to help smooth out the mess. He said Tuesday that he hopes his brief return to the office will ultimately prove to have done that.

“When (Montgomery) comes in, if he prevails in November, it will be in much better shape,” Romley said.

He also said he and his staff tried to stay out of the mud during his campaign, a difficult feat given the volume of Arpaio’s attacks against him.

“Campaigns today are very nasty and when I chose to come back in, I really meant it when I said I was going to try to restore the dignity of the office,” Romley said. “We took the high road. And you can question whether it was good or wrong. But I think we conducted ourselves in a manner that we’re very proud of.”

In the end, he believes those very attacks by Arpaio were what did him in. He estimated that Arpaio spent $700,000 to defeat him, though the official tally won’t be known for several more weeks.

The most recent records from the county Elections Department show that Arpaio had spent $236,000 on “media buys” as of the end of July. His ads against Romley have been running regularly on network TV ever since.

“Maybe I was naive,” Romley said. “We knew it would have a tremendous impact, but I guess I’m surprised it was that big.”

Romley, by comparison, raised $172,000 for the race and Montgromery put together $99,000.

For his part, Montgomery pledged to stay out of the ongoing Maricopa County feuds. Though many of his law enforcement policies are staunchly conservative and similar to those of Andrew Thomas, he said he wants to be a no-drama officeholder.

“What I’ve pledged to the sheriff and the people of Maricopa County is that I’m going to be a partner in law enforcement,” he said. “I’m not interested in feuds and battles.”

Arpaio celebrated the victory of his likely future partner, too. “That’s going to make my job very easy,” he said. “It’s a great night for the Republican Party.”

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.

“The extraordinary powers to indict and prosecute come with the extraordinary responsibility to apply them honorably,” McCain said. “Rick does.”

Romley, who previously served 16 years as county attorney, took over the office again in April after Republican Andrew Thomas resigned to run for state attorney general.

During Romley’s five year absence, Thomas used his role as chief prosecutor to target nearly a dozen county officials who he said engaged in a massive conspiracy to undermine his authority.

When Thomas resigned in April, one of his targets, the county Board of Supervisors, appointed Romley to help smooth out the feud.

“If you believe, as I do, that experience matters — that character matters — then you’ll understand why I’m so proud to stand with Rick Romley in the race for county attorney,” McCain said in his statement.

By endorsing Romley, McCain essentially butted heads once again with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the senator’s longtime adversary who is backing Romley’s opponent in the GOP primary.

Arpaio endorsed challenger Bill Montgomery, a former prosecutor in the county attorney’s office, and even paid for television commercials attacking Romley.

Romley and McCain, however, share more than just a common foe in Maricopa County. Both men are also veterans of the Vietnam War, where McCain was a POW and Romley lost both his legs.

McCain, who is also facing challengers in Tuesday’s primary, referred to the war connection as part of the endorsement, saying Romley “has spent nearly his entire life in service to others.”

“From his service to our country in Vietnam, where he lost both legs during battle,” McCain said, “to his relentless pursuit of justice for the victims of crime, Rick understands that doing what’s right, popular or not, is the true measure of service.”

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will go on to face Libertarian Michael Kielsky in the November general election. No Democrats are running in the race.

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.

It makes the sheriff one of the top political spenders in Arizona, putting him ahead of most candidates for Congress and all but one person running for statewide office.

According to the latest disclosure, most of Arpaio’s spending in June and July, roughly $236,000, went to buying ads in local media.

While the report doesn’t say anything specific about the media buys, Arpaio appears to have only bought television air time for two ads this year. Both of them have led to an investigation by county elections officials.

The ads appear to have little to do with Arpaio’s own 2012 reelection, although they mention he plans to run for a sixth term. Instead, the 30-second spots attack two of his fellow Republicans who happen to be running in primaries this year against candidates Arpaio has endorsed.

The ads, which target Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley and attorney general candidate Tom Horne, make passing reference to Arpaio but go on to lump the two candidates in with Democratic President Barack Obama and liberal politics.

Arpaio has endorsed Romley’s primary challenger Bill Montgomery and Horne’s primary opponent, Andrew Thomas.

After a complaint by Romley earlier this month, the county elections department opened an investigation into the ads, trying to determine whether Arpaio is allowed to use his reelection money to weigh in on other races.

Only four Arizona candidates have spent more campaign money this year than Arpaio, according to the latest campaign reports.

Sen. John McCain has spent $19.2 million for his reelection campaign. His Republican primary challenger, J.D. Hayworth, has spent $2.6 million. Republican gubernatorial hopeful Buz Mills spent $3.3 million before dropping out of the race in July. And Rep. Gabrielle Giffords spent $1.1 million for her reelection bid.

Watch one of Arpaio’s ads:

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.

By contrast, Gov. Jan Brewer, arguably the most popular politician in the state right now, has spent just $135,886 in her fight to keep the seat.

Records show most of Arpaio’s money has gone to the Summit Consulting Group, a Phoenix firm that’s been managing a huge nationwide fundraising blitz for him.

Carried by Arpaio’s popularity with conservatives nationwide, the effort has shattered Maricopa County fundraising records by bringing in $2.5 million, much of it coming from out of state.

From April 2009 through May 2010, Summit received $600,765 for the campaign. It’s not clear precisely how the money was spent, with most of the payments, 35 in all, listed as simply “Fund raising, consulting, adm” on Arpaio’s disclosure forms.

Summit’s president Chad Willems did not immediately return a call seeking comment, and Arpaio could not be reached.

The latest disclosure, which was filed June 22, shows the sheriff’s supporters gave him $1.2 million in just the first five months of this year.

That’s double the $610,000 he raised back in 2008 when he last won an election. That campaign was believed at the time to be the most expensive in Maricopa County history.

Most of Arpaio’s fundraising this year took place as he was flirting with a run for governor. Had he run, Arpaio could have shifted the money from his campaign for sheriff into the gubernatorial bid. He ultimately ruled out the run for higher office on May 3.

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.

Tonight’s debate, which will be televised at 7 p.m. on KAET (Channel 8) in Phoenix, promises to be somewhat more civilized. It will last just a half hour with the candidates seated at the same table and facing questions from veteran moderator and host Ted Simons.

Still, there may be no avoiding the goop these two want to sling.

Since the last debate, Horne has launched a website that, in part, focuses on the fact that Thomas is under criminal investigation by the FBI for allegedly abusing his power while serving as Maricopa County attorney.

Meanwhile, Thomas has called an investigation of Horne, the state schools superintendent, for failing to disclose a bankruptcy he had in 1970.

Click for larger image.

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.

It also comes just days after the Obama administration confirmed it plans to file a lawsuit to block the law before it goes into effect on July 29. That suit could come as early as next week.

For its part, the Mexican government said it believes the law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23, will severely hurt its ability to do business with Arizona and the U.S.

The briefing notes that Mexico is the third-largest trading partner with the United States and the second-largest buyer of American exports. Nearly 20 million Mexicans lawfully visited the United States last year, the filing said, and Mexican citizens spend about $7.35 million every day in Arizona alone.

“If S.B. 1070 takes effect,” the briefing said, “Mexican citizens will be afraid to visit Arizona for work or pleasure out of concern that they will be subject to unlawful police scrutiny and detention.”

The government also said the law puts down a major stumbling block for comprehensive immigration reform, which both the U.S. and Mexico see as a necessity.

The briefing quotes Mexico’s own ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, as saying the law “threatens to poison the well from which our two nations have found and should continue to find inspiration for a joint future of prosperity, security, tolerance and justice.”

Finally, the briefing compared S.B. 1070 to police actions targeting African Americans in the south before and during the civil rights era.

The Mexican government said it believes bias and stereotyping will be an inherent part of enforcing the law, despite Arizona’s promise that it will not.

“S.B. 1070 gives local officers carte blanche authority to stereotype and to rely on the popular perception that appearances of “foreign-ness” are justifiable means for disparate treatment,” the filing said.

“This inevitably will lead to casting an overbroad net in the pursuit of ‘illegal immigrants.’”

Arizona politicians have accused illegal immigrants of a lot of nasty things over the past few months, but Gov. Jan Brewer threw out a new one Wednesday night on national television.

The Republican governor told Fox News she signed the state’s new immigration law to prevent, no kidding, beheadings brought on by illegal immigrants.

“We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it,” Brewer told host Greta Van Susteren live from the Arizona desert. “Everything from the crime to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings.”

It was one of many grim pictures the governor painted of what she called “violence, terrible violence” in Arizona during her national television appearance.

Watch the video below. The comment comes just after the six-minute mark. Or read a full transcript of the interview.

In an interview Tuesday with a Phoenix newspaper, Arizona’s top educator dismissed the terrorism-related deaths and injuries of hundreds of Israelis in recent years as “minor incidents.”

State school superintendent Tom Horne appears to have been trying to walk back his previous quote that “Israel totally put a stop to terrorism by building their wall.”

But while admitting to the Phoenix New Times that Israel indeed still suffers from deadly terrorist attacks, he went on to classify them as “minor incidents” compared with others in Israel of the past decade.

“Terrorism — as a major problem — I think was solved by the wall,” he said, according to a story posted Tuesday afternoon on the newspaper’s website.

Horne, a Republican whose final term as superintendent ends after this year and who is running to become Arizona’s next attorney general, made his original comments about the Israeli border wall during a June 3 debate in Scottsdale.

He said at the time he believed the U.S. should build a wall along the Arizona-Mexico border and called it the “only way” to stop drug smuggling and illegal immigration “once and for all.”

But Horne’s claim that terrorism evaporated in Israel because the nation built a wall along part of its border with the Palestinian territories was false.

More than 230 people were injured and 15 killed in attacks in Israel last year, according to the Israeli Security Agency. In March of this year alone, there were 125 attacks, killing three people and injuring four others.

In an interview with Heat City last week, Horne said he was standing by his claim, despite the clear evidence it was untrue. “I’m talking about something that there is pretty common knowledge about,” he said.

When asked about his comments by Phoenix New Times reporter James King, Horne at least acknowledged that Israel still gets hit by terrorist attacks. But he said he doesn’t consider more-recent attacks to be as serious as those that made headlines in the past decade.

Tom Horne

Tom Horne, the head of Arizona’s public school system, drew huge applause from a crowd of tea partiers earlier this month when he said Israel’s war on terror proves that the U.S. needs to build a wall along the Mexican border.

“Israel totally put a stop to terrorism by building their wall,” said Horne, a Republican whose final term as school superintendent ends after this year and who is vying to become the state’s next attorney general.

The “only way” to stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling in the U.S. “once and for all is to finish building the wall,” he told the Scottsdale audience on June 3 during the first Republican debate of the attorney general’s race.

Despite the applause he received, however, Horne is wrong about terrorism in Israel. Far from eliminated, such attacks remain a regular occurrence there.

The Israeli government even releases monthly reports about the number of attacks carried out within its borders and makes those reports available online.

In April, for instance, the Israeli Security Agency reported 56 terrorist attacks in that month alone. Only one of those — a rock thrown at a car — caused any injury. Ten of the attacks involved mortars launched from the Gaza Strip.

A month prior, in March, the ISA reported 125 terrorist attacks, including a shooting that killed two Israeli officers and a rocket attack that killed a foreign worker. Those numbers also included 79 attacks involving Molotov cocktails, 25 rockets that hit and three explosive devices that were set off.

Heat City reached the superintendent by phone last week to ask him where he got his information that terrorism was no longer a problem in Israel.

“I think that was pretty common knowledge,” Horne said. “It’s been all over the newspapers.”

Asked which newspapers had reported it, Horne could not name one. When told, then, about the number of attacks in just those two months, he was momentarily speechless.

“How do they define a terrorist attack?” Horne said finally.

The education chief insisted he had made the same statement at numerous campaign events and no one questioned him about it before.

But instead of changing his mind after hearing the facts, Horne stuck to his story. He said he remained certain of his claim’s accuracy despite what the Israeli government reported.

“I’ll stand by it,” he said. “I’m talking about something that there is pretty common knowledge about.”