Arizona sheriff endorses Poizner

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Sheriff Joe Arpaio, best known for housing prisoners in a tent city in the Arizona heat and cladding them in pink underwear, is backing Steve Poizner in the California gubernatorial race, Poizner’s campaign announced Friday afternoon.

The endorsement comes after Poizner made illegal immigration a central issue in the Republican primary against Meg Whitman. Poizner strongly backs Arizona’s controversial new crackdown on illegal immigrants while Whitman opposes it.

“Steve Poizner has been a staunch supporter of Arizona’s illegal immigration law,” Arpaio, who has been sheriff of Maricopa County since 1992, said in a written statement. “I have witnessed firsthand the effect that this law has had on curbing illegal immigration in our state in its early stages, and I believe that as governor, Steve Poizner would enact a similar law to secure California’s borders. Steve Poizner will be tough on illegal immigration, and California and Arizona must work together to fix this problem once and for all.”

Poizner has taken a hard tack on the issue, blasting Los Angeles County supervisors for voting to boycott Arizona, and pledging to end taxpayer-funded benefits for those in the country illegally, revoke the business licenses of companies that hire them and kill state contracts with companies that cannot prove all their employees are legal residents.

But a document from an earlier political campaign shows that Poizner once was more liberal on the issue; in 2004, he said he would oppose restrictions on using state funding for prenatal care or abortion services for undocumented women.

Although California’s Republican primary voters strongly support the measure, most have said they would vote for someone who opposes it. Among voters statewide, about 50% support the measure while 43% oppose it.

--Seema Mehta in Los Angeles