That Arizona could be in play this year is testament to the oddity of 2016. Clinton held narrow leads in a few polls taken in the state over the summer, though Trump has led in most polls, and his lead has grown locally as well as nationally in recent weeks. Still, one polling average puts his lead at just 2 percentage points—in a state Mitt Romney won by 10 in 2012.

“The numbers say it is a swing state, even though it shouldn’t be,” a Trump campaign official acknowledged to me, adding that the Republican’s team is monitoring it closely. Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, has spent six figures on an ongoing flight of television ads, and Democrats claim to have 170 staffers in the field. If this is not a swing state, both presidential campaigns are wasting an awful lot of resources on it.

Whatever happens in Arizona in November, the state stands as a microcosm and test of this year’s cross-cutting political currents: the changing American Southwest and rising Latino vote; the divided Republican Party; and the demographic clash highlighted by Trump’s divisive campaign. What better illustration could there be of the fractured Republican Party, after all, than a single ballot that features Trump; Senator John McCain, whom Trump memorably insulted; and Arpaio, whose media-fueled immigration provocations prefigured Trump?

Franco’s wallet is pasted with the slogans: “DISMANTLE ICE/DEFUND THE POLICE.” She describes the state’s politics as a racial and generational battle. “The browns versus the grays,” she calls it—the ascendant young Latino power versus the fearful old white people, many retirees from elsewhere. “They came here from other states where they’re not used to seeing Mexicans, and then they think they should be in charge, even though we were here first,” she says.

It is Arpaio that the activists want most ardently to unseat, and they insist they have a chance. Arpaio, who is now 84 and has been in office since 1993, won his last reelection, in 2012, with 50.7 percent of the vote in the conservative bastion of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its predominantly white suburbs.

Like Trump, Arpaio built a national reputation on outrageous, attention-getting stunts, such as forcing prisoners to wear pink underwear, work on chain gangs, and eat rotten food; some prisoners are housed in an Arpaio-built, un-air-conditioned “Tent City.” Arpaio has also, like Trump, led the charge on the false claim that President Obama was not born in the United States. Just last week, he told a Tea Party group that he was undeterred by Trump’s nominal reversal on the issue. “It is my duty to investigate identity theft, forged documents, especially government documents,” he told the local public-radio station, KJZZ.

Federal judges have repeatedly ruled that Arpaio has abused his power as sheriff and that his jails violate inmates’ rights. Courts have also repeatedly found that Arpaio’s department engages in racial profiling, but Arpaio has ignored and even mocked judges’ orders to change department practices. As a result, he now may face criminal contempt-of-court charges and is due in court next month, on October 11—the day before Arizona’s vote-by-mail ballots are due to hit voters’ mailboxes.