Sheriffs, sovereignty, and rural governance

In much of rural America, the sheriff is not simply a law enforcement officer but a political actor with broad policymaking power. Sheriffs, like district attorneys, are elected officials who run for office on local platforms. In almost every jurisdiction, sheriffs run the county jail. In rural places where courts are distant and state capacity is limited, the sheriff operates as the face of local governance. In her recent book The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, Jessica Pishko traces the office of the sheriff from its origins to its contemporary role in American governance. Jessica Pishko’s work makes manifest that their power is a product of American legal history.

 The office originated in Anglo-Saxon England, where sheriffs functioned as local agents of the crown, responsible for tax collection. In the United States, however, that model was reshaped during the early nineteenth century.  In the Jacksonian era, the sheriff became an elected official. This move was framed as a democratic improvement on inherited English institutions. Andrew Jackson and his allies sought to expand popular participation in government by multiplying elected offices, imagining the sheriff as a representative of the yeoman farmer and working-class men rather than an arm of elite authority. That historical choice structures the office today, embedding law enforcement authority within electoral politics and helping explain why sheriffs continue to see themselves not only as enforcers of law, but as truest local interpreters.

Control over the county jail is a central source of the sheriff’s authority. As a 2012 blog post, “Rural politics, patronage and (their links to) prisons” identifies, in rural areas, the jail is often one of the largest sources of revenue collection. This reinforces the sheriff's authority and provides strong incentives to expand jail capacity and keep beds filled, especially in rural counties with limited tax bases and alternative sources of public funding. 

Credit: "Summit County Sheriff Ford Taurus Interceptor" by Seluryar is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The county jail also functions as a central site of policymaking. Tasked with operating county jails, the sheriff makes unilateral decisions about booking, detention, intergovernmental contracts, and immigration enforcement. These decisions take on fiscal significance because the sheriff is not merely enforcing criminal law, but managing an enterprise that directly affects the county’s budget. In this way, jail administration transforms the sheriff into a powerful local political actor whose enforcement choices are inseparable from questions of governance. 

Recognizing sheriffs as political actors helps explain their increased prominence in national politics. Sheriffs run for office every four years, often in off-cycle elections that depress turnout and insulate incumbents. Many sheriffs campaign on political platforms. Association with the Republican Party is a recent and increasingly prominent phenomenon. As Pishko explains, crime and immigration have become central issues in national conservative politics, making sheriffs attractive allies. Within firmly conservative rural counties, the sheriff has embraced its political dimension. 

In interviews and reporting, Pishko documents the rise of the so-called “constitutional sheriff” movement. The movement argues that sheriffs have a special duty to uphold the original Constitution, positioning the sheriff as a bulwark against distant state and federal authority. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought these dynamics to a head. When governors issued mask mandates and business-closure orders, local enforcement frequently fell to sheriffs. Many sheriffs, especially those in rural areas, were reluctant to enforce the orders. Sheriffs deployed the rhetoric of the “constitutional sheriff,” to justify refusing to enforce these orders. Sheriffs framed themselves as originalist interpreters of the Constitution tasked with protecting private property, gun rights, and religious freedom from elite liberal technocrats. The movement drew energy from longstanding rural anti-government traditions, including militia movements and the sovereign-citizen ideology.

The rise of the constitutional sheriff is a symptom of hollowed out state capacity in rural America. Sheriffs may seem local and accountable, but they wield extraordinary power with minimal oversight. In rural America, the sheriff's office is not simply enforcing the law, it is often deciding what the law will be.

Right to water? Not for California's rural residents.

In 2012, California passed AB 685, becoming the first state to recognize the human right to water. Despite this, as of 2024, more than 900,000 California residents get water from water systems that fail to provide them with safe, clean drinking water. 

In 2024, the California State Water Resources Control Board published data showing that 379 of the 457 failing water systems were small water systems with 3,000 or less service connections (often translating to households), mostly located in California's rural agricultural regions in the Central Coast or San Joaquin Valley. Most of these systems rely on groundwater, which may be contaminated with arsenic, nitrate, or 1,2,3-TCP (trichloropropane).

This map shows all of the failing water systems in California that serve a population of less than 5,000. Credit: SAFER Dashboard

San Lucas is a small unincorporated rural community in the Salinas Valley with a population of 324. San Lucas has been under a 'do not drink' order for over 10 years because of elevated levels of nitrate in their water supply. The community's wells are located on nearby farmland, where nitrate from crop fertilizer leeches into the groundwater that the well ultimately pulls from. Nitrate consumption has been linked to cancers and pregnancy complications, including "blue baby syndrome." The California Department of Public Health has told San Lucas residents that because nitrate is not absorbed through the skin, babies can be bathed in contaminated water. But most residents choose to use bottled water for bathing, or at least rinsing, young children because of skin irritation they experience.

San Lucas residents are incredibly burdened by the lack of access to clean drinking water. The state provides households with 15 gallons of water per week, but for most families these 15 gallons do not meet their household's needs. Imagine being a family of five or six, having to allocate 15 gallons among your family for drinking, cooking, and sometimes even bathing. To supplement the small amount of water given to them, residents drive to King City (10 miles away) to buy bottled water. Still the must pay a flat rate water bill for unsafe water. 

Allotment of water jugs. Credit: Ray Chavez

California has attempted to address this problem through the creation of the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience Program (SAFER). Established in 2019, SAFER allocates $130 million each year to provide a funding source for operation and maintenance costs, consolidation projects, replacement water, and funding for administrators. Since in creation, SAFER has provided $700 million in grants for small, disadvantaged communities in California. While SAFER was originally set to end in 2030, in 2025 the California legislature extended the yearly allocation of funds to 2045.

San Lucas has spent years trying to solve their water problem. The community has received a little over half a million dollars in technical assistance funding from the SAFER program. This money has funded a study of solutions, with alternatives including an 8 mile pipeline to King City, two different well-head treatment systems, or drilling a new well. 

In June of 2025, the San Lucas County Water District (the small company providing water to San Lucas) voted to pursue alternative four: drill a new well. But drilling a new well comes with its own uncertainties. 

As Paul Hamann previously discussed on this blog, many rural landowners of private domestic wells are facing the problem of wells drying up due to over-pumping. Private domestic wells provide water to between 1.5 and 2.5 million California residents, but are not regulated by the state. If you own a private domestic well, you are responsible for testing for contaminants to ensure that it is safe to drink. 

While any new well drilled by San Lucas would still be a part of a water system regulated by the state, they undoubtedly will face the same uncertainties of ensuring that their well does not run dry. Seemingly even more pressing, how can San Lucas ensure that their new well does not face the same fate as the current wells? Surrounded by agricultural land, it seems like a tall task to find a location to drill a new well safe from nitrate contamination. 

Whatever path San Lucas takes, there is no doubt that many communities need clean drinking water. Indeed, they needed it ten years ago. While the State Water Board may tout that 98% of California's have clean drinking water, we must not neglect the other 2% because of their location in rural areas. 

The changing Chinese attitude towards the rural

I was born in Shanghai at the turn of the century in Zhongshan Park, rooted in the heart of the city. In the 1930s, my grandfather watched as the roots of the first international port in China shot off into a burgeoning international hub. Following WW2, my father watched factories churn out concrete and asphalt onto the packed dirt and cobblestone streets of the city as the rapid industrialization of China choked out any surviving remnants of Imperial China.

 

    Old Shanghai Circa 1960s

By the time I was born, modern Shanghai had been presented to the world, a true “global” city by the metrics the size of its economy, China’s New York and London wrapped into one neon package. In the twenty years since, it has only grown, the bright skylines on both sides of the Huangpu River, Puxi and Pudong, divided in appearance only by the living memory and history of Pudong’s more humble origins.

View landing into Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Oct 2025

  The Bund, Shanghai, Oct 2025

In the day of my father, the city was the desired end goal, the only location where the rapidly industrializing China could be experienced by the formerly agrarian subsistence farmers who had always comprised the bulk of China's populace. The city was where any enterprising person could get rich, the gateway to the unimaginable international world. A hukou (a little more about that in this prior post and the Economist) in the city was the most desirable to be able to get the exclusive social services reserved for the residents of the city.

And yet, core to the Maoist goal of uplifting the “pure” agrarian proletariat was the belief that the city cultivated undesirable pro-bourgeois sentiments, and thus, from the 1950s to the 1970s, urban youths were all sent to countryside (a collection of photos detailing the Back to the Countryside Movement collected by the University of Dartmouth here). The thinking was that the hard work of rural life would leave them firm believers of social equality, while also fostering the toughness that only farming and ranching builds (Read more here).

Until the Back to the Countryside movement ended in the 1980s, the idea to stay in the rural communes was unthinkable, the whole experience a memory in the same type of biting poverty that they had lived through during the revolution. In many respects, the rural people were the same people as the impoverished peasantry that had long suffered. In some parts of China today, any reference to the mountains still carries the old reference to the impoverished villages that remain in those areas (a la hillbillies). The food of such areas remains directly translated as “dirt food” or peasant food.

Today, however, a growing counterculture has emerged, two generations after the boom. Rising costs in the city make finding a job, buying an apartment and starting a family prohibitively expensive for graduates of even the most elite universities. Rising youth unemployment (near 20%)  reveals the worst job market China has ever seen (A slight improvement in this new 2026 quarter by South China Morning Post). Even in the context of urban opportunities, the struggle and competition itself can be overwhelming even for those who grew up with it.

Growing numbers of Chinese youths seek to escape to the rural, rather than continue in the race of urban life. This trend continues even with the now easier process for the obtaining of a hukou, and the friendlier sentiments inviting these new exurban residents to new cities. 

The Economist points out that:

It had taken just two generations for a Chinese family to pass from pre-industrial agrarianism to post-material urban malaise

In this, the Chinese and the Americans are now more similar than different. As China’s growth slows as America's did in the 1980s, and the glow of the urban lights burns more than it inspires, with it will come the nostalgia for what is gone. When the struggles of rural poverty are removed, only the admittedly beautiful view remains.

  My Mom's hometown, now a highway, circa 2010s

Rural tourism: a double-edged sword

Summer Hike 2025 - Kīholo Bay, Big Island, HI 

Where tourists vacation, money often flows: lodging bookings increase, more jobs are created, and the beauties of rural communities are discovered. The reality, however, is that the people and places making money aren't always the ones paying the price for over-tourism. Within this context, people like environmentalist Hanan Kouli are part of a movement supporting rural tourism. 

Kouli explained the significance of tourism to rural economies in places like Hawaii, and the need for a more sustainable approach, stating:

...[M]any residents rely on [tourism]...The problem isn't tourism, it's too much tourism without enough care. 

As someone from a rural island community, it's encouraging that tourists and locals alike recognize the harms of mass tourism, even though it can also be a double-edged sword. Without increased community control, rural tourism can reproduce the same harms as mass tourism - displacement and cultural commodification - albeit with better branding than mass tourism. 

What is rural tourism? 

Rural tourism occurs in non-urban areas and is considered a sustainable alternative to mass tourism. A 2015 blog post put it even more simply, defining rural tourism as: 

...[T]he country experience [with] opportunities for visitors to directly experience agricultural and/or natural environments. 

I felt the appeal of that "country experience" while staying on a farm in New Zealand. Even then, it was clear that rural areas were still recovering from COVID-19's impact on the tourism industry. Indeed, especially after COVID-19, one benefit of rural tourism is attracting more tourists like me, who seek rural destinations to avoid large crowds and experience a different way of life.

Farm Stay 2024 - New Zealand

What are the benefits of rural tourism?

At its best, rural tourism can broaden the local economy by keeping income streams rooted in rural communities instead of flowing from (or towards) urban centers. The promise is simple: jobs and demand for local businesses in rural areas. According to a 2023 article from the journal for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, rural tourism:

...[Promotes] rural community development and...could counteract the negative impacts of urbanization.

Hawaii offers an illustration of how that can play out. Tourism is the state's largest economic driver, but the benefits are most visible when tourism dollars circulate through rural communities, rather than resorts. This is particularly true in rural areas that offer  "authentic" island experiences, like the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC), Hawaii's top-paid tourist attraction. 

Mariott Resort 2024 - Ko'olina, Oahu

However one views it culturally, PCC channels visitor spending into the rural community where it operates - supporting jobs, and for many workers, substantial college scholarships. 

Sadie's Inn 2025 - Utulei, American Samoa

Similar dynamics show up in my home country of American Samoa. Tourism helps offset the country's financial reliance on its tuna processing plant - Starkist - which makes up about one-third of its workforce. Rural attractions like the National Park and Ofu Beach draw tourists whose spending supports lodging, food service, and cultural education.

My criticisms of rural tourism

My gripe with rural tourism is rooted in concern about what happens to "authenticity" once it becomes the selling point. What was once authentic is often changed to meet consumer expectations rather than community needs. That was the dynamic Professor Lisa Pruitt described as "faux rural" in her 2013 blog post. 

Sapphire Princess 2023 - Pago Pago, American Samoa

The trade-off of living in a highly marketable rural "paradise" is that it can make you feel like you're always on display. When tourists arrive expecting a specific version of island life, the pressure to look the part increases. A 2023 study on the Socio-Cultural Effects of Rural Tourism observed that 

...[T]he development of tourism in rural communities has the potential to produce unwanted socio-cultural consequences.

I felt that dynamic early. As a child, I remember giving staged performances for tourists. Those dances weren't fake, but over time, the performance mindset skewed my perception of "authenticity."  

So, what now?

I can't deny the economic benefit that rural tourism has brought to rural communities, mine included. I still see it as a bridge between the "urban-rural" divide discussed in Professor Pruitt's 2024 blog post. The goal isn't to eliminate tourism; it's to shape it on community terms. 

What does this look like? Perhaps restrictions on short-term rentals, visitor caps, or local hiring requirements. In any case, increased community control is essential to stop rural tourism from reproducing the same harms as mass tourism.

Big tech sets its sights on rural Arizona

The blog’s most recent post discussed the Rural Health Transformation Program. Passed as part of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” this “rural slush fund” was added as a last-minute sweetener to secure the support of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

One of the $50 billion fund’s stated goals is “tech innovation.” States utilizing the funds must spend them on three or more approved uses, including:

Providing training and technical assistance for the development and adoption of technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals, including remote monitoring, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies.

This sounds promising. Rural hospitals face unique challenges, and technology that improves care and increases capacity could be transformative. An earlier post on this blog discussed how RFK Jr. has promoted AI nurses as a potential solution to the rural health care crisis. That optimistic vision contrasts sharply with how artificial intelligence is currently arriving in many rural areas.

In December 2025, Sharon Goldman reported for Fortune on a massive AI data center project planned for rural Arizona. The development would be built on a 2,000-acre property called Hassayampa Ranch, located about 50 miles west of Phoenix near the unincorporated community of Tonopah in western Maricopa County. The area is home to a few hundred residents, drawn there for its tranquility and clear skies for stargazing.

Photo caption: Buckeye Ranch, Tonopah. © Nextdoor

This quiet corner of the desert has become the center of intense activity since developer Anita Verma-Lallian purchased the land for $51 million, backed by billionaire venture capitalist and Trump mega-donor Chamath Palihapitiya. The plan is to spend as much as $25 billion to build a data center that would produce 1.5 gigawatts of compute and consume as much electricity as a million homes.

Photo caption: Visualization of the land parcel. © Jason Ma, 2025

Investment in rural communities sounds exciting, but who benefits? As Andrew Aitken noted in The Builder Bureau, AI is largely being developed for and used by urban populations, while rural people continue to struggle with poor network coverage and slow internet speeds. So while it remains unclear whether Tonopah will reap any benefits from hosting AI infrastructure, residents are already bearing the costs.

This pattern echoes concerns raised in prior entries on this blog. A May 2024 post discussed how rural folks in Montana are resisting efforts to make their land a “carbon sponge” for urban America. As one county commissioner put it:

The question I keep hearing is, ‘Why are they making us the dumping ground for the rest of the country?’

A similar dynamic is at play in Tonopah, with rural Arizona poised to bear the environmental burden of infrastructure that primarily serves urban tech consumers.

In her Fortune article, Goldman explains that Tonopah residents are already worried about incoming noise and light pollution, traffic and infrastructure strain, and negative impacts on property values. Concerned community members have organized and signed petitions against the development. But with such a small population, their political power is limited against billionaire-backed interests. As Kathy Fletcher, a 76-year-old resident who lives on a one-acre plot next to the Hassayampa Ranch site, said:

All we can do is plead with the people here... We’re kind of treated like the redheaded stepchild, and they just think they can throw anything they want out here... We’re having a difficult time fighting the battle to tell people, ‘You can make a difference.’

Another major concern is water. AI data centers generate vast amounts of heat and require millions of gallons of water per day for cooling. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a medium-sized data center can consume up to 110 million gallons of water per year—equivalent to the annual water usage of approximately 1,000 households. Larger data centers can use up to 5 million gallons per day. For the people of Tonopah, who rely almost exclusively on ground wells for their water needs, the prospect of a massive development tapping into their water supply is daunting.

As Dillon Beckett wrote on this blog, utility-scale projects are “overwhelmingly sited in rural areas” and tend to “benefit a sliver of the community’s social strata (wealthy, often absentee landowners, with extensive real estate holdings) while spreading the cost across the entire community.” The Hassayampa Ranch data center fits this pattern: Silicon Valley investors stand to profit, while local residents face rising utility costs, depleted aquifers, and a transformed landscape.

Tonya Pearsall, a Tonopah resident who has lived in the area since 1999, feels a profound sense of loss as this project rapidly changes the character of her once-calm community:

We used to be able to see the Milky Way—that’s why we moved out here... It’s painful... I could break down and cry.

Photo caption: The night sky over Maricopa County. © David Iversen, 2025.

There is some movement in Congress to address these concerns. Representative Jim Costa (D-CA) has introduced the Unleashing Low-Cost Rural AI Act, which would require the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, and Energy to study the impact of AI data center expansion on rural areas, including effects on energy supply, consumer costs, and infrastructure needs. Whether such a study will lead to meaningful protections for communities like Tonopah remains to be seen.

The Hassayampa Ranch project is not unique. Similar fights are playing out in Louisiana, Wisconsin, and Georgia, where rural residents are pushing back against data center proposals that promise economic development but threaten local resources and quality of life.

As AI continues its rapid expansion, rural communities across the country will increasingly find themselves on the front lines of a familiar struggle: who decides what happens to rural land, and who bears the cost of progress?