Who created the "constitutional sheriff" myth? Hint: It's not in the Constitution

Four years ago, George Floyd’s murder and the resulting months of demonstrations brought unprecedented scrutiny to the deeply problematic practices of American policing. Yet one key figure — the county sheriff — barely got any attention, while the focus was on large urban police departments. Since then, sheriffs have since become significant figures on the populist right, epitomized in the mythical notion of the "constitutional sheriff," which sails right past the fact that the word “sheriff” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. 

In an effort to restore a certain balance, two quite different books on the historic and present-tense role of sheriffs have been published in the same month. The first, "The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States," by Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman (author interview here), is a rigorously synthetic work of political science that contains some telling specific details, but whose core strength lies in tying them together.  

The second of these books, "The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy" by journalist and attorney Jessica Pishko, is primarily a book of reportage centered on Pishko's own work and others', with a significant historical look-back. It’s largely focused on how the right's constitutional-sheriff myth has served to intensify threats to democracy in the 21st century, even as sheriffs claim to be veritable beacons of democracy. This book's core strength lies in curating the specific details to reveal deeper, broader connections, and showing more than telling. 

Pishko begins her book with a small meeting in a church 90 minutes north of Phoenix, and notes, “Part of understanding the appeal of the county sheriff and the far-right movement the office inspires requires understanding these parts of the country, places where the U.S. Constitution remains revered, but the people making the laws feel far away.”

As that passage shows, Pishko has the capacity and willingness to understand why the constitutional sheriff movement is so appealing to some, but she’s also razor-sharp in sorting through its contradictions. To bring those contradictions sharply into focus, I recently interviewed Pishko and largely focused on two key figures: Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and primary architect of the myth, and Mark Lamb, an Arizona sheriff who has successfully managed to bring Mack’s radical ideas much closer to the mainstream. Pishko also looks back to early influences like Cleon Skousen and forward to the involvement of the Claremont Institute's hard-right intellectuals, explores how different strands of right-wing ideology became intertwined with sheriff mythology and examines potential paths forward.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The subtitle of your book suggests that sheriffs pose a threat to democracy, but that's primarily about how their power has been mobilized over the last 30 to 40 years, most notably through the "constitutional sheriff" movement. I'd like to begin by asking you about two key figures in this story, Richard Mack and Mark Lamb, both who they are and who they imagine themselves to be. First there's Mack, who you say "has his own imaginary history," with a made-up tale about Rosa Parks. 

In his telling, Rosa Parks gets on the bus and she's very tired. The bus is full and she sits in the whites-only section of the bus, and the bus driver calls the police and says, "You need to move this woman from the bus." In Mack's telling, which is very emotional with a lot of pathos, like he's going to cry, the imaginary sheriff comes and asks Rosa Parks if he can escort her home. He escorts Rosa Parks home and gets her something to eat. Sometimes they stop for a burger. So instead of throwing her off the bus, this imaginary sheriff takes her under his wing, buys her a hamburger, tells her how much he wants to help her and her family, and then escorts her home. 

That's his imaginary version of what the good sheriff would have done. He would not have arrested Rosa Parks for sitting on the bus, but rather would have shown her a great deal of care and concern. 

How does that story contrast with real history?

In the real story, Rosa Parks intentionally wanted to start the bus boycott, for Black residents to boycott the buses. She did not need saving. In the real version, Rosa Parks is a powerful figure in the civil rights movement. She decided to make this move in order to make a point and start a bus boycott.

So what this shows about Richard Mack is that, in his eyes, one of the appeals of the constitutional sheriff movement is that they represent a sort of gentility that doesn't exist in policing anymore. The idea that the sheriff is a gentle helper of damsels in distress, rather than some sort of code enforcer. That's what Richard Mack wants to see sheriffs as — community helpers, not running in with guns a-blazing or SWAT teams, but rather this chivalrous vision. That's one of the things that struck me about it, this very old-timey chivalrous idea. 

What he wants to convey is that the sheriff is there to help community members who are in distress, particularly when they feel that their civil rights are being violated. What's interesting about this is that Richard Mack, in his monologues, will go on to talk about Rosa Parks the tax protester, Rosa Parks the gun owner. He compares Amish people who don't want the FDA to regulate some of their medical products, people who want to own machine guns — he presents them as like Rosa Parks because they are people for whom big government or the deep state is infringing upon their civil rights, and the sheriff is there, this chivalrous figure who will come in and help them.

The other reason that's a gross warping of Rosa Parks and civil rights history in the United States is that the demand of civil rights protesters was not for less federal government, but indeed more federal government. The ask from civil rights protesters was not that government leave them alone, as Richard Mack would say, leave them alone, but rather that the federal government would enforce federal laws which require desegregation, which require due process and equal rights. So it's this interesting way of twisting the civil rights movement to better suit the constituents of the constitutional sheriffs and the sheriff themselves. 

And how does that high-minded wish-casting contrast with Richard Mack's actual history?

He came upon being a sheriff almost because he had tried many other things. He was born in Provo, Utah. He wanted to be an FBI agent but didn't pass the test. He says his father was an FBI agent, which is very common among Mormons. So he became a police officer in Provo. He says he did not like being a police officer in Provo, because he did not like writing tickets. He describes his job as being a meter maid. 

In his telling, he left the police around the time he went to a speech by Cleon Skousen, an anti-communist far-right figure who thought that local law enforcement should be doing more to root out communism. Mack was inspired to move to rural Arizona and run for sheriff, which he did, and he won. He served about two terms there. The area where he was sheriff did not have a lot of crimes, so there was not necessarily a lot for him to do. During his second term, he was recruited by the NRA to join a lawsuit against the United States over the Brady bill, and this is where he began his claim to fame.

After this lawsuit, which was actually named after Jay Printz, a Montana sheriff, not Richard Mack, he went on the road to kind of make his name. But what actually happened was that because of this lawsuit, the residents of his county voted him out. They didn't want him anymore. Then he ran for sheriff in Utah and didn't win, ran for the Senate and didn't win, ran for the House of Representatives in Texas, didn't win. He lost a bunch of elections. He ran a fake reality-show campaign for president, it was on Showtime. So he cycled around, basically not winning any elections, and over time met up with other people on the far right, people like Stuart Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers, the people who founded the Three Percenters.

He eventually found like-minded people he could go on the road with and talk about this idea of the "constitutional sheriff," which he seems to have developed over time. This was the idea that local county sheriffs would serve as an important figure on the far right, to protect, as he says, individuals from the federal government.

Mack may have talked about this imaginary connection with Rosa Parks, but you argue that it was the right-wing reaction to the first Black president that gave him real-world support.

It was certainly the election of Barack Obama that helped Mack consolidate his theory about the constitutional sheriff. It also inspired people like Stuart Rhodes, who worked on Ron Paul's campaign for president. Mack was also a supporter of Ron Paul, so they also met in the midst of this sort of libertarian Tea Party movement.  

This thing about the Rosa Parks story is that he uses it as a way to deflect [charges of] racism. One of the people that Mack has defended was Randy Weaver, a central figure in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, whose wife and infant son were killed by federal agents. There's this moment, right after Obama was elected, where Richard Mack is giving an interview and asks the interviewer to talk to Randy Weaver. He says that Randy Weaver is not a racist and like Rosa Parks, he wanted to be left alone. He puts the reporter on the phone with Randy Weaver, who starts yelling about Barack Obama and says, "Well, I certainly am a white supremacist!" Richard Mack quickly takes the phone back, and is like, "No, no, no, Randy Weaver is not a white supremacist." So you can understand how "Randy Weaver is like Rosa Parks" is very appealing to more people, while Randy Weaver the white supremacist is not so appealing.

Mack is a key figure in getting this movement started, but Mark Lamb plays a more central role. How did he get involved and how has he shaped it over time?

Mark Lamb was elected [as sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona] in 2016. He did not have a lot of law enforcement experience. He ran a pretty bare-bones campaign. He was running on very core conservative issues. He ran on gun rights, he ran on an anti-abortion platform. He did not run on many law enforcement issues. The prior sheriff was well known for being very anti-immigrant. He tried to run for Senate, had to drop out because of a scandal. So Lamb was elected as an individual people knew very little about. But once he came into office and Trump was elected, he realized that he could align himself with Trump and the MAGA movement, and began to pursue what I think was probably his real goal, which was a career in reality television. 

He did a variety of reality-based shows in his county, and over time he adopted a new persona. He got a hat, he stopped wearing a uniform, he started wearing a big belt buckle and button-down shirts and a flack vest. Over time, people in the GOP in Arizona realized that he would be a very useful avatar. So in 2020, Lamb got picked up to start an organization called Protect American Now, which does not seem to exist anymore. Once Lamb started running for Senate [a campaign he lost], they lost steam. I think what Lamb wanted to do was re-create something like the constitutional sheriff movement, but make it more politically relevant and also attach it much more to modern media.

Richard Mack is from a different generation of the far right, and is not the most modern person. He's not actually the biggest fan of Donald Trump, he's not attuned to the MAGA movement. Social media is not his scene.  So I think Lamb wanted to be a flashier version. Also, the department Lamb runs is much larger, maybe the third or fourth largest in Arizona. He's really bringing more cachet to this movement, because he is in a purple state, contested territory, close to the issues of immigration and guns. So he really just adopted that and used it as a springboard to run for Senate. He lost. I think his next move — he seems to be placing himself to let go into media or TV. It might depend on who wins the presidency. 

Beyond these major figures, you dive into a confluence of different issues, including the COVID pandemic as well as guns and immigration. These are all issues where sheriffs have found themselves increasingly playing a central role. So what stands out as the through-line of these different stories? 

Honestly, you can trace the through-line as something like far-right populism. Sheriffs are populist — they're elected on the local level. They're much more conservative than other elected officials on the county level. The other thing is that sheriffs are tied to counties and land, not tied to cities. If you have 200 people or 2 million people [in a county], you still have an elected sheriff. That means a sheriff may or may not represent a lot of people, but they can still get noticed at the state level and even on the federal level.

As I argue in the book, they also serve as avatars of the far right. Because they are elected, they're permitted to speak on political issues. Initially, sheriffs, like all law enforcement, did not support the civilian ownership of firearms. But over time the NRA and Gun Owners of America — which Mack was also part of — discovered that sheriffs were useful for the civilian gun ownership movement, because sheriffs are sort of the populist link between the people and the government. At this point, the vast majority of sheriffs support something like an unlimited Second Amendment. If you look at court filings by various sheriffs groups, they are consistently arguing that civilians should have more access to firearms, not less.  

That may strike you as an unusual position for sheriff associations to take, but this is a specific legal movement which argues that the position of sheriffs is that it's undemocratic to restrict access to firearms. So they're promoting this populist idea that individuals should have access to whatever firearms they want, because it is undemocratic to do otherwise, and that sheriffs, as democratically elected officials, are the ones looking out for the people. 

I think we saw something similar in terms of COVID, when sheriffs suddenly were out there in the forefront when business closures and mask mandates happened. Honestly, from what I saw on the ground, some sheriffs were not sure how to respond. This was a position they had not been in before. But groups like the CSPOA and other right-wing groups, militia-style groups, went to sheriffs and said, "We don't think you can enforce these," and sheriffs were pretty eager to say, "Yeah, you're right, we can't enforce these." Richard Mack went around telling sheriffs they ought not to enforce church closures and mask mandates, so sheriffs suddenly found themselves right-wing heroes for allowing churches to stay open, for not arresting people for not wearing masks.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

We see the same thing with voter fraud. Sheriffs are not normally involved in voting or election investigations, but as this became a popular far-right issue, sheriffs became recruited into the fray. The same with immigration. Of course Donald Trump is very anti-immigrant, so they were easily recruited. There were a lot of anti-immigrant groups who have been working to recruit sheriffs for a long time, so there was an underlying structure that was already primed. 

You also write about some of the most egregious violations committed by sheriffs and the various attempts at reform. What are the prospects for real reform, beyond the piecemeal one-sheriff-at-a-time approach, which has mixed results at best? 

I want to say first that for a long time it has been very important to many groups of people — particularly Black and brown communities — to elect sheriffs that more closely match their views. The backlash to electing Black sheriffs in particular has always been very intense, and we still see that today. North Carolina, a few years ago, elected a handful of Black sheriffs who were Democrats. Today we see the North Carolina Sheriff Association making rules that would require sheriffs to cooperate with ICE. As soon as a sheriff is elected who's not white and conservative, sheriffs mobilize to make sure that they can't be progressive. 

People say the easiest way to change sheriffs is through elections, but the problem is, first, it's very difficult to elect new sheriffs. Sheriffs have so much power in hiring and firing that it's easy for them to fire opponents. Sheriffs are plugged into local power structures, they understand who's in power and who's not, so they quickly understand who's going to get them votes and who's not. Because a sheriff's mandate is so large — they control wide swathes of things, they not only handle evictions, they run jails, sometimes they sell off seized assets like cars or firearms. So sheriffs get large donations from groups that have interests in everything the sheriff does. Sheriffs in many places can dispense a large number of contracts—everything from medical care in the jail to technology to who does the linens to the architecture firm, to the gun range they use. So all these groups have a vested interest in who the sheriff is. 

Some states are trying to regulate sheriffs to some degree. I spoke with people in Washington state who have who have a number of constitutional sheriffs and have tried very hard to implement state structures. The challenge there is that on the state level, sheriff associations are extremely powerful. They do a lot of lobbying and because they are law enforcement agencies, lawmakers are inclined to believe what they say. 

So I think it's really hard. But we see that in all areas of criminal justice reform right now. We see that some reforms, like body cams, aren't working very well. In my opinion, because the sheriff's power is so large and diffuse, one way to think about defunding or reducing the power perspective would be to start to remove responsibilities from the sheriff, to take away some of these projects the sheriffs do, which are ways that they continue to get power and influence and money. 

There's so much more to your book that we didn't get into, so my last question is wide open: What's the most important question I didn't ask, and what's the answer? 

I think the most important question is, "Why does it matter whether sheriffs are right-wing or not?" I think it's a fair question. While a lot of people probably aren't attuned to who their sheriff is, we know that sheriffs can do a lot, because they are legitimate law enforcement. They can execute search warrants, they can send SWAT teams to people's houses. They can evict people with SWAT teams if they feel like it. If you are in a county where the sheriff doesn't feel like enforcing red-flag laws and you ask the sheriff to do it, he won't do it. You have little to no recourse, because under United States law, law enforcement officers — all of them — have no obligation to keep people safe. There's no affirmative obligation. So if sheriffs choose to selectively apply this, as many do, there is no tenet of law that can require them to do so. 

This is a big failing in terms of United States policing, but it matters a great deal for people on the ground. I point to jails in particular because they are very dangerous. People die. I think it really shows the lie at the root of this "sheriff for the people" movement. If constitutional sheriffs or right-wing sheriffs really were for the people, and their goal was to protect the everyday citizen, then why are they allowing people to die in their jails? Why are pregnant women giving birth on the floor of jail cells? Why are people killing themselves? I say, well, if you are for the people, then why are you not for the most vulnerable people who are in your custody and care right now?