they will enforce, and those they won't....and people elect them to do just that. You would think some media organization would do a story on this, but guess it isn't such a big deal.
Buncombe 'constitutional' sheriff candidate wants to wield 'ultimate power in America'
Tom FiedlerAsheville
https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2021/08/18/buncombe-county-sheriff-candidate-david-hurley-constitutional-sheriffs/5560544001/
Under a Carolina-blue sky, shaded by the oaks framing Pack Square, the small crowd formed a loose, attentive circle around a man speaking and gesticulating with the fervor of a revivalist. This was David Hurley, 37, a candidate to become the Buncombe County sheriff in 2022.
“The sheriff is the ultimate power in America,” Hurley declared, pacing inside the circle. “It’s been the best-kept secret that they didn’t want to get out. Even sheriffs that are in the seat today don’t know the power that they have.”
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Hurley is running as a Democrat, the only one so far to file against incumbent Sheriff Quentin Miller, also a Democrat who says he’ll seek reelection.
The folks in Pack Square were Hurley’s kind of people, united by a shared belief that their government isn’t only to be mistrusted, it is malevolent and to be feared and opposed.
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Hurley would first need to wrest the Democratic Party nomination from Miller, the incumbent sheriff, who on July 22 announced his intention to seek reelection. This may seem unlikely given Hurley’s prior Republican Party registration and his public assertions that Donald Trump was cheated out of reelection in a fraudulent vote.
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Hurley explained to the crowd in Pack Square how he would act:
“Come election time, you’re going to have candidates for sheriff who want to blindly enforce the law. And when that law comes down that you have to be vaccinated, they will make sure it’s enforced. I will not.”
If Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer mandates vaccinations for all, Hurley continued, he said he will “come on TV and say, ‘Mayor, say that to the public again I will walk down to your office and you’ll be leaving in silver handcuffs.” The crowd applauded vigorously.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/10/08/rod-iron-antigovernment-christian-right-and-far-right-movements-join-freedom-festival
Rod of Iron: Antigovernment, Christian Right and Far-Right Movements To Join at 'Freedom Festival'
October 08, 2021
Creede Newton
A broad range of Christian Right, antigovernment and other far-right extremists will appear at the gun-toting, anti-LGBTQ Sanctuary Church’s Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Greeley, Pennsylvania, from Oct. 8-10.
The event showcases a widening coalition intent on destabilizing democracy, with Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, who in 2013 founded the Sanctuary Church, playing a prominent role, experts tell Hatewatch. Steve Bannon, Joey Gibson of the far-right Patriot Prayer group, former Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone and pastors Dan Fisher and Gary Haskell, who want to revive a “Black Robed Regiment” of clergy to fight for “liberty,” are scheduled to speak.
2019 Rod of Iron Freedom Festival
John Lott, a discredited researcher who briefly served in the Justice Department and uses dubious research to claim undocumented immigrants commit more crime, and
Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association – a group that claims sheriffs have more power than the federal government – will also speak.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/editorials/os-op-constitutional-sheriffs-wayne-ivey-brevard-20210727-5wak74q3pvc23kjdnhobukgpfi-story.html
The anti-constitutional beliefs of self-proclaimed ‘constitutional sheriffs’
By ORLANDO SENTINEL EDITORIAL BOARD
ORLANDO SENTINEL |
JUL 27, 2021 AT 1:40 PM
If a county’s top elected law enforcer wants to call himself a “constitutional sheriff,” fine. We’re all for sheriffs and other elected officials keeping their oaths to uphold the federal and state constitutions.
For some sheriffs, however, upholding the Constitution has increasingly come to mean that they — not the courts — are the final arbiters of what’s constitutional and what’s not.
Picking and choosing which laws to enforce based on individual constitutional interpretations is a theme of the movement, theoretically allowing sheriffs to rule over their counties like one-man supreme courts.
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It’s a terrifyingly un-American movement as the nation — Florida in particular — continues its descent toward right-wing extremism and authoritarianism. Its adherents have either a willful or accidental ignorance about Article III of the Constitution, which places all judicial power in the hands of courts — not county sheriffs.
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