Their first attempt at forming this utopia was in the town they had just liberated, Mendoza approached Harland Ross who was the new sheriff and de facto leader of Hidalgo. Mendoza charismatically pitched his idea of Ross merging his deputies with the legion and installing himself as dictator. Ross however refused to install his friend in the same position that Comanchero King, Benedicto Aguado had been in. Ross also was focused on restarting Hidalgo's future and reshaping the town's image to open it up to trade and had no desire to try a socio-political experiment based on a philosophy which had never worked successfully and always resulted in a tyrannical government.