GOP primary voters in Arizona’s largest county oust election official who endured years of attacks

PHOENIX — Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has fought back against death threats, almost constant harassment and streams of misinformation during his nearly four years overseeing elections in one of the nation’s most prominent political battlegrounds.

He couldn’t survive his reelection bid. The Republican who relentlessly defended the legitimacy of Arizona’s elections lost his primary race this week in a vote that could significantly influence the way elections are run in one of the nation’s most-watched counties.

Richer lost to Justin Heap, a state legislator who has questioned certain aspects of how elections are run, in a three-way GOP primary that ended Tuesday. While Richer will remain in office through the November election, his exit early next year will signal the end of a term wracked by controversy. His office, which splits election duties with the county board of supervisors, has had to fend off attacks over the results of the 2020 presidential election, as former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claimed that widespread fraud had cost him the race.

The outcry from a vocal and determined group of Republican lawmakers, local officials and grassroots activists spiraled into protests and threats that ultimately energized the campaign for his ouster.

Richer congratulated Heap, who will move on to the general election, in a post on the social platform X, promising a smooth transition. He also had a message that countered the animosity and distrust in the system that has animated so many Republicans in the state when elections haven’t gone their way. Elections have winners and losers, he said: “Accept it. Move on.”

Trump disputed the outcome in each of the six battleground states he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, but perhaps nowhere was the pushback from Republicans as forceful or as long-lasting as in Arizona, where his margin of defeat was less than 11,000 votes.

In the aftermath of the election, Republicans in the state Senate hired Trump supporters led by a firm called Cyber Ninjas to review Maricopa County’s handling of the election, a widely mocked effort that ended up affirming Biden’s win. Since then, several counties in the state have burned through election directors whose offices have faced virtually nonstop criticism and harassment from activists and even their own county commissioners, who promote conspiracy theories about everything from voting machines to mailed ballots.

Although he wasn’t in office in 2020, Richer had consistently defended how elections were run and votes were counted in Arizona’s most populous county. That made him a target for those who falsely believed the last presidential election had been rigged, and felt similarly after Republican Kari Lake lost her campaign for governor two years later. In one case, the day after Richer spoke during a chaotic public meeting when county officials certified the November 2022 election results, he received two voicemails on his cellphone telling him to “run” and “hide.”

The caller, a California man whose expletive-laden voicemails claimed Richer wanted to “cheat our elections” and “screw Americans out of true votes,” was arrested earlier this year, according to the Justice Department.

Election officials and others who promote good government across the country responded to Richer’s primary loss by saying he was an inspiration for his transparency and having the courage to stand up for the facts.

David Becker, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said there isn’t a meeting of election officials he attends where Richer is not brought up as a positive example.

“He has taken as much abuse and harassment as almost any election official in the country and responded with grace and transparency and humor,” Becker said. “He’s the reason people like me do the work we do.”

Heap didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. He posted on X on Wednesday seeking donations for his November election, which he called the “second-most important race after re-electing President Donald Trump on the ballot.”

“This November, we will end the laughingstock elections that have plagued our county, state and nation,” he wrote.

He has stopped short of saying the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen, but has characterized the state’s practices for handling early ballots as insecure and has questioned the ballot chain of custody. Earlier this year, Heap proposed an unsuccessful bill that would have removed Arizona from a multistate effort to maintain voter lists.

During a debate in late June, Heap denied sowing discord over elections for political gain and said voters do not trust the state’s voting system because it’s poorly run.

“It’s not because they believe misinformation on social media,” Heap said during the debate. “It’s because they see the same problems happening election cycle after election cycle after election cycle, and they cannot get elected officials to even acknowledge that this is a massive problem and address their concerns.”

Stan Barnes, a Phoenix-based political consultant and former Republican state senator, said it has become a challenge for average Maricopa County voters to know what’s real and what’s not on issues of election integrity, and they can find whatever answers they want depending upon their political point of view.

“I don’t think we should hit the panic button, but we should acknowledge that a great many voters, for better or for worse, have a negative impression of election integrity in the state of Arizona,” he said. “In the long game, it’s in all our interests to remedy that in some manner.”

In November, Heap will face Democrat Tim Stringham, who was unopposed in his primary and said he was encouraged by how many Republicans voted for Richer.

“If you voted for Stephen Richer, I imagine you did so because of his honesty in the face of lies over the last four years,” Stringham wrote in a post on the social media platform X. “I’m asking you to continue to vote for the honest candidate. Consider voting for a Democrat this time around.”

Several prominent election deniers also won their GOP primaries for Arizona legislative or congressional races, but results were mixed in races for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which shares responsibility for overseeing elections. While establishment-backed Republicans won several seats, an incumbent who had consistently defended the county’s elections lost overwhelmingly.

Jack Sellers was the board chairman in 2021 when legislative Republicans pushed the Cyber Ninjas audit. In that role, he angered the right wing of his party by pushing back against the review and standing up for the county’s election office and its operations.

While he congratulated the candidates moving on to the general election, Sellers had a pointed message to critics.

“To the election deniers who have dedicated so much time, energy, and money to defeat me and others, I say: be careful what you wish for,” he said in a statement. “At some point, you will have to answer for your efforts to undermine our democracy. I hope that you will eventually recognize that Maricopa County remains the gold standard for elections and have the courage and bravery to admit your mistakes.”

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Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper, Gabriel Sandoval, Sejal Govindarao and Jacques Billeaud contributed to this report.

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