Fernando “Fernie” Madrid spent decades as an educator, primarily in Apache County, Arizona, in the state’s rural northeast corner. He’s largely retired from the classroom now, but remains dedicated to the community’s students. So, in 2024, he decided to run for election as Apache County Superintendent of Schools. He had no idea that his decision would subject him to a campaign of harassment and intimidation at the hands of Apache County officials, turning his life upside down.

Fernie was running against the incumbent School Superintendent, Joy Whiting. Joy is married to Michael Whiting, the Apache County Attorney. And Michael didn’t take kindly to the prospect of his wife having electoral competition. Rather than let the election play out, he used his post as County Attorney to harass and intimidate Fernie and force him to drop out. 

Whiting had two assistants on his County Attorney’s Office payroll surveil Fernie and physically assault him while he was collecting signatures to appear on the ballot. They pelted rocks at his house, and, finally, sent him creepy anonymous letters threatening legal action against him if he didn’t drop out. Devastated, but terrified of what Whiting would do to him and his family next, Fernie ended his candidacy. 

The County Attorney’s job is to prosecute crime and uphold the law, but Whiting instead turned to crime to prevent Fernie from running against his wife. (Yes, Michael Whiting is being criminally prosecuted for his harassment of Fernie. One of his assistants has already pled guilty.)

Michael Whiting’s retaliation and harassment campaign was not just criminal, but wildly unconstitutional. In America, we resolve political disagreements through open debate and at the ballot box, not through government officials intimidating and harassing challengers. Declaring one’s candidacy and campaigning for office is at the core of protected free speech. Michael Whiting’s movie-villain intimidation campaign to strangle Fernie’s election bid was thus a violation of Fernie’s bedrock First Amendment rights. So Fernie has teamed up with the Institute for Justice (“IJ”) to file a federal lawsuit to hold Michael Whiting and his assistants accountable and to ensure that what happened to Fernie does not happen again.

Case Team

Clients

Attorneys

Staff

Case Documents

Media Resources

Get in touch with the media contact and take a look at the image resources for the case.

Andrew Wimer Director of Media Relations [email protected]

Related News

About Fernie 

Fernie Madrid is a grandfather and retired educator. Born and raised in Apache County, he loves the community and calls St. Johns, the county seat, home. He also spends time a couple hours’ drive away in suburban Phoenix, where he helps as a caregiver for his father, who lives there half the year.

Fernie cares deeply about education and has devoted his life to students. After a stint in the Army Reserve, he started his education career as a middle school science teacher. He worked his way up, serving as an assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, and interim superintendent. Throughout his career, he worked to provide additional leadership in underserved, predominantly Native American schools and build coalitions in the community. (Much of the Navajo Nation’s borders lie within Apache County, and the county contains more federally designated reservation land than any other county in the country.) 

For Fernie, everything was about getting the best possible education for students. Serving as Superintendent of Schools would have allowed him to continue his mission of improving schools for the community. He first ran for Superintendent back in 2016—an election he narrowly lost, fair and square. Eight years later, he was ready to run again. 

Fernie decides to run for Apache County Superintendent of Schools

In 2024, Fernie decided to run for Apache County Superintendent of Schools. Colleagues and constituents encouraged him to run. He had learned from his unsuccessful campaign in 2016, and he was ready for another go.

In February, he filed to run in the Democratic primary, which was scheduled for the summer. The community supported and encouraged his candidacy: Fernie connected with local families and collected about 500 petition signatures, more than needed to appear on the ballot. 

Fernie’s opponent would be Joy Whiting—the incumbent Superintendent and the wife of the County Attorney, Michael Whiting. Not a problem, in Fernie’s mind: He knew the Whitings and had never had any issues with them. He had even supported Michael Whiting in his initial bid for County Attorney many years earlier. But Michael Whiting would soon make Fernie the target of an intimidation and harassment campaign. 

Apache County Attorney Michael Whiting launches a criminal campaign to force Fernie out of the race and protect the incumbent (his wife)

Michael Whiting wanted his wife to stay in office, and he was not going to let Fernie stand in the way. Rather than risk a bad result at the ballot box, he would just eliminate Joy’s competition. The goal: get Fernie to drop out of the race. The method: weaponizing his position as County Attorney. He used two assistants employed in his County Attorney office, Daryl Greer and Trent Jensen, to carry out the plot. 

Whiting and his confederates’ scheme played out in several acts. Soon after declaring his candidacy, Fernie noticed that two men were following and taking photos of him as he was out collecting signatures. Around the same time, someone showed up at Fernie’s house seeking to deliver mysterious-looking documents to Fernie. Fernie wasn’t home, but his son was. Fernie’s son called and asked what he should do; when Fernie told the man over speakerphone to identify himself, he refused and left. Fernie did not connect these incidents to his campaign, but he found them bizarre and anxiety-inducing. He’d soon learn that both incidents were the work of Whiting’s assistants.

Things escalated from there. One day, Fernie was collecting signatures outside of a church on the main street in St. Johns when two men approached him. Fernie introduced himself and explained what he was running for, but the two men ominously told him that they knew who he was. One of the men acted as if he was going to sign Fernie’s petition to appear on the ballot. But the other slapped the clipboard out of Fernie’s hand and pushed him in the chest and throat, forcing him back into the street. As they left, they verbally threatened Fernie: “Michael Whiting is just getting started with you.” Around the same time, someone—almost certainly the assistants—pelted Fernie’s house with rocks. 

Fernie was terrified for himself and his family. The last straw came just a few days later, when Fernie received a mysterious package at his house from a fictitious sender with a fictitious address. Scared to open it, he turned it over to the state Attorney General’s Office. In time, he learned that the package had come from Whiting and his assistants. And, he learned that the package contained over a hundred pages of documents concerning Fernie and his family, along with a creepy, anonymous extortion letter. 

It provided an ultimatum: drop out of the race by April 1 or face a lawsuit—a ruinously expensive lawsuit in which your extended family and countless more documents and personal information about you will be subpoenaed. (The unsigned letter insinuated that Fernie had falsified his residence on his voting documents and was thus ineligible for office. He hadn’t—but even if he had, Arizona requires that election qualification challenges be made in a civil court process, not through anonymous extortion letters.) 

The ongoing threats and harassment terrified Fernie. If Whiting and company were willing to go this far, what would they do next? Fernie felt that he could not continue to put himself or his family in harm’s way. Devastated, he withdrew from the race in late March.

The fallout

Shortly after, things fell apart for Whiting. The Arizona Attorney General’s office searched his home and then seized control of his office after he went on the run and started destroying evidence. The state eventually indicted Whiting and one of the assistants for their harassment of Fernie. (The state’s investigation also encompassed financial crimes by both Michael and Joy Whiting and one of the assistants, Daryl Greer, and the trio was indicted for several abuse-of-office offenses as part of that investigation, too.) Greer accepted a deal in which he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor for his treatment of Fernie; he was sentenced to probation. The criminal case against Michael and Joy Whiting is ongoing.

With Fernie out of the race, Joy Whiting won re-election as superintendent unopposed, despite the indictment against her. So, too, did Michael Whiting as County Attorney—though he was booted from the office for lack of eligibility when his law license was suspended because of the criminal indictment.

Legal Claims

The assault, threats, and harassment left Fernie shaken to his core. Thankfully, the First Amendment does not allow government officials to weaponize their office to silence opponents who dare to challenge them or their allies in an election. Fernie has teamed up with IJ to file a lawsuit to vindicate those most basic constitutional principles and hold Michael Whiting, his employees Daryl Greer and Trent Jensen, and Apache County accountable.

Fernie Madrid decided to run for public office, and as a result, became the target of a campaign of threats and harassment designed to force him to drop out of the race. But running for office is constitutionally protected activity under the First Amendment. Indeed, it’s the kind of core political speech at the heart of the First Amendment. And the law is clear: Government officials cannot use their positions of power to harass, intimidate, or punish their political opponents. But that’s exactly what Michael Whiting and his employees did. He decided that Fernie should not be able to run against his wife and then carried out a campaign designed to scare Fernie out of the race. The First Amendment clearly forbids wielding government power to punish speech that way, and Fernie is entitled to damages for that egregious violation of his rights.

Litigation Team

Fernie is represented by IJ Attorneys Mike Greenberg, McCarley Maddock, and Ben Field. Arizona office Managing Attorney Paul Avelar serves as local counsel. 

The Institute for Justice

The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit, public interest law firm that defends the First Amendment nationwide, including the right to engage in public discourse and local politics free from government retaliation. Our work fighting First Amendment retaliation includes Gonzalez v. Trevino, a landmark victory before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 resuscitating a Texas woman’s suit against local government officials who had her jailed in retaliation for her political opposition to the mayor. IJ is also defending a man who had his vehicle seized and damaged when he used it to campaign against a mayor in Ohio, a newspaper that was raided after criticizing a mayor in Kansas, and four people in Alabama arrested by a county attorney and sheriff over a political disagreement.