Polarizing Dupnik weary of spotlight

With the eyes of the nation upon him as the Jan. 8 shooting tragedy unfolded, he planted himself firmly in the spotlight when he called his state a "mecca of prejudice and bigotry."

Yet he's a man who says the limelight makes him so deeply uncomfortable he has largely avoided going out in public since.

His comments made him the darling of the left - and such anathema to the right that the Sheriff's Department's e-mail server almost crashed because it was so deluged with what he characterized as thousands of comments that were often "downright caustic and nasty and violent and vulgar."

He said he was proud to see Tucson come together after the tragedy.

But he became a polarizing figure that day. While supporters praised his words and created Facebook pages declaring their admiration, a Utah man launched an effort to recall Dupnik and the Pima County Tea Party Patriots called for him to resign. They say he politicized the shootings without evidence and embarrassed the community before a national audience.

It all got to be so much that when the Tucson Tea Party announced a meeting this month to talk about the mental-health implications of the shooting, founders implored their members not to talk about Dupnik for just this once.

Dupnik expresses anger about Arizona's new hard-line tack on immigration, calling 1070 "stupid" and a bunch of "fornicaboobery," even though he says his department is aggressive in enforcing illegal-immigration laws. He pronounces himself disgusted by the degree of support enjoyed by the gun lobby, which is how he ended up telling Katie Couric that the Legislature next will mandate an Uzi in every crib.

While he said he made those comments in part because he was angry, and in part because of a leadership void on the left, he has no interest in seizing the mantle.

He doesn't want to go to the Legislature to complain about lax gun regulations because he suspects he'd just be "tarred and feathered." And he has no intention of being the counter to conservative sheriffs, such as Maricopa County's Joe Arpaio and Pinal County's Paul Babeu, who thrive in media attention the way plants respond to sunlight.

"Not at all," he said, when asked if he plans to take a more public role in offering an opposing viewpoint. "Difference of opinion is what makes the world go 'round. I don't have an agenda, and hopefully in a few weeks nobody will remember who I am."

In an interview Thursday, Dupnik recalled being in a parking lot in Palm Springs, Calif., when he received the news about the shooting. On the long drive back, as details trickled in, he reached a full boil. Federal Judge John Roll was a friend, as is U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who last had lunch with him during the primary election season. "I suspect most of the people had the same reaction I did. Maybe mine was a little more severe because I knew some of the people," he said. "It was like getting hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer."

He said he didn't think about the fallout and said he had no idea it would generate the response that it did.

"The closer I got to Tucson, the angrier I became," he said. "And in my heart, I just had felt all along that all of the vitriolic nonsense that these flamethrowers put out 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has to have some significant consequences. And I just think it's irresponsible," he said.

He told FBI officials that they weren't going to like what he was going to say.

Neither did a bunch of other people.

Although he said he might have used "better adjectives" and wouldn't have been "quite so euphemistic" if he had it to do over again, in general, he's not sorry. "In retrospect, if I hadn't said it then, nobody would have ever heard it."

And he's not dialing back on the partisan aspect, either, saying he absolutely was aiming his criticism at conservatives. "The vitriol coming from the Democrats is a totally different kind of angry response, but it's just a response to the right. I am no doubt very biased," he said. Liberal talk show host Keith Olbermann, he said as an example, "intellectualized everything he was saying," while "the flamethrowers on the right spit out all kinds of nonsense, rumors, misinformation, things that are not factual and they try to get people to hate government, to hate politicians, elected officials. That's the kind of thing they do, and that's what I think is wrong."

In the hours and days after his comments, Republican elected leaders said he'd been irresponsible, and Babeu took to the media circuit to say law enforcement was supposed to try to calm a heated situation and not be part of the problem.

Dupnik acknowledges there's only so much blame he can ascribe. "I'm sure that this demented person (suspect Jared Lee Loughner) didn't do what he did because of Rush Limbaugh, specifically, or Sarah Palin or ... Glenn Beck. But it's a conglomeration. When people hear this vitriol every day, it has some consequences. and I think that's how the tea party got so darned angry so fast."

What he does know, he said, is that Loughner was angry at government and "I think in his demented mind, he saw her (Giffords) as representing government."

The local tea party suffered its own fallout after the shootings. The main organizer said he received dozens of e-mail comments, some saying he had blood on his hands or saying it was too bad his family wasn't at that shopping center that day. One of the victims of the shooting was taken into custody at a subsequent community meeting after saying to Trent Humphries, "You are dead."

Does Dupnik think his comments might have fueled such comments?

"Probably," he said, adding he doesn't agree with it. "I wish nobody would get any threats. I think there are a lot of honorable people, obviously, in the tea party. I just think they are misguided."

This is not the first time Dupnik and the tea party have rumbled. Last year, during the election season, he got into a public spat with the group, when he called its members bigoted and noted, "We didn't have a tea party until we had a black president."

Dupnik said he might have already made an impact, taking some solace in the fact that both opponents and supporters were rallying in front of his headquarters last month.

"Who was rallying against the tea party before? Nobody. I think a lot of people didn't agree with the way they were conducting themselves," he said, referring to shouting at Giffords' health-care town halls in 2009, when Giffords urged the crowd to be less rude. "Why do they try to shout down a congresswoman who is trying to talk about a legitimate issue?

"I don't think anybody should take offense at what I said. Unless maybe they feel guilty."

Jeff Rogers, head of the local Democratic Party, said Dupnik's words were long overdue. "It has provoked a discussion. Just having it out there to talk about is a positive thing," he said. Even if Dupnik doesn't respond to a larger call, "Now that he's raised the issue, there are a lot of people out there willing to run with it."

"And the people who are so upset that he said it - it says a lot about them that they're upset."

But the head of the Republican Party here, Brian Miller, said he recently saw a cartoon featuring a caricature of Dupnik saying, "The Republicans did this. Now let's talk civilly."

"I thought that was a nice summation of the event," Miller said, "So yeah, I think everybody has a right to their own opinion, but when you're acting as the elected chief law enforcement officer of the county, those remarks are not only uncalled for, but really, you just can't do them."

Dupnik, at 75 and with 53 years in law enforcement, said he thinks he'll probably run again.

He hopes the controversy dies down, saying he prefers to go to the grocery store and have nobody notice him.

What if no one picks up his charge from here?

"I guess it just dies. My job is to be the Pima County sheriff, not to lead some kind of a national campaign. That's all I've ever been, is a cop. I have the best job in town."

On StarNet: Find video of Dupnik's post-shooting comments at azstarnet.com/video

Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at rbodfield@azstarnet.com or 573-4243.