According to several reports, Gov. Janet Napolitano has signed an executive order shifting $1.6 million out of the budget for a task force set up to unravel human smuggling networks in the state, and reassigning the money to a new effort to round up tens of thousands of fugitives.

The cutbacks were not shared across Arizona’s 15 counties. Rather, they were aimed at just one county — Maricopa — and its controversial sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

The governor clearly intended to make a statement about the sheriff’s pursuit of illegals, as her spokeswoman acknowledged, stating that Sheriff Joe’s “crime suppressions sweeps” were a factor. “It’s part of the whole situation that we’re looking at,” she said. “You can’t be that oblivious to what’s going on in the world.”

Arpaio did not take this with good humor, and quickly responded. “A felony-warrant task force,” he told a local paper, “is a cover-up for taking away grant money, my money given to me by the Legislature, to fight illegal immigration.”

Even The Times took the sheriff’s words seriously:

He may have a point, Arizona House Speaker Jim Weiers told The Tribune. (He and the sheriff are both Republicans, by the way, as is the president of the state senate, Tim Bee; the governor is a Democrat.) Mr. Weiers questioned the governor’s power to strip state funds, and the Maricopa County Attorney is assessing whether any laws were broken.
With just a few days left before the state grant money leaves his coffers, Sheriff Arpaio said that his efforts against illegal immigration would remain as strong as ever. “Nothing changes,” he told The Arizona Republic.

So now Governor Napolitano took a position…in a roundabout sort of way. Unlike Phoenix Mayor Gordon, the governor didn’t come out directly and condemn the sheriff’s actions. she made no speech denouncing him, gave no newspaper interviews. Instead, she stuck her toe into the debate, seeking to make a stand on very particular grounds.

The governor, too, has political ambitions beyond the end of her second, and final, term.

Will her strategy work? Two intriguing, purely anecdotal facts have emerged since this situation began. First, the sheriff’s phone lines have been jammed with citizens offering to send money to make up for what the governor took away. Second, the letters to The Times in response to its article have been surprising in the support many of them expressed for Sheriff Joe. Of the first 36 letters on a fairly long list, 24 are solidly behind his actions:

Sheriff Joe has gone out and changed things in this county. The only people who are upset are the ones he caught and their immediate families. Those of us who are not doing anything illegal are perfectly happy about what he is doing….

That Sheriff is a HERO in the West. Too bad we don’t have him in California….

Sheriff Arpaio is doing his job. This is dirty politics, and the governor is unbelievable to decrease a budget aimed at a Sheriff that refuses to play the political game….

I don’t live in Arizona, but I’m willing to contribute my own money to Sheriff Arpaio’s department to help him in his work….

As I already said, it’s only anecdotal, but sometimes even just a few lines can tell quite a tale.