State Representative Justin Heap (R-Mesa) announced at the State Capitol during a press conference on Wednesday that he will enter the Republican primary race for Maricopa County Recorder, challenging incumbent Stephen Richer.
Richer has come under extensive criticism for maintaining that there were only minor problems during the 2022 election, fighting back through the courts against attempts to obtain public records about the election and other related election integrity lawsuits.
Ensuring voter confidence, and that Arizona’s elections are honest, transparent, and secure is the civil rights issue of our time.
We must put an end to the hyper politicization of the Recorder’s office.
Join me today as I announce my candidacy for Maricopa County Recorder. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/GRC9KLLsdX
— Az State Rep. Justin Heap (@azjustinheap) February 28, 2024
Heap, who is an attorney, said in a press release, “With voter confidence at a near historic low, and amidst the hyper politicization of the Maricopa County Recorder’s office under both Stephen Richer and Adrian Fontes, it is time to return the position of County Recorder to one that is exclusively focused on running transparent, secure, honest, and lawful elections.”
During his speech on Wednesday, Heap laid out his reasons for running, which included listing the problems with Richer.
He referenced Richer’s PAC.
“Our current county recorder is also running designed to target the very candidates whose election he is going to oversee,” Heap said.
Shortly after entering office, Richer formed a PAC to help election-fraud-denying Republicans, raising ethical and legal questions of possible misconduct.
Heap explained how bad elections have become under Richer’s leadership, with the results from the 2022 election not known until November 21, 2022, almost two weeks later.
“Maricopa County is the laughingstock of our nation and the world, and it is resulting in voter confidence dropping to all time lows,” he said. “In Florida, during the last election cycle, Tampa Bay was hit with one of the worst hurricanes in a century and they still managed to run a clean and effective election three days later and have the results out the following day.”
Heap explained how the ballot tabulation process could have been sped up during that election, using “the provisions that we already have in law.” However, Richer “neglected” to use them.
He added, “Maricopa County deserves a county recorder who will follow the law and make elections more transparent, more secure, and more honest. … The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has proven that he will not do any of these things.”
In contrast to Richer, Heap said he would not “blame the voters” and say it was “their fault” for encountering long lines due to the ballot printing issues encountered in 2022 since they chose to vote on Election Day instead of earlier by mail.
“We have provisions to make these secure. We simply have our county recorder who is not doing it,” he said.
Channel 12 reporter Brahm Resnik attempted to get Heap to state that Republicans wanted to violate the law in 2020. Heap said, “I know that you guys need to stir up clickbait to get the story. I am not here to talk about what has happened in the last election. I want to look forward and see how we feel our party moving forward. And the issue we have is in the last election, 300,000 active Republican voters did not mail in their ballot and did not vote on Election Day.”
Heap placed considerable blame on Richer for the 2022 election problems.
“It is clear that the incompetence of our current county recorder contributes to the belief among all of our voters that things aren’t on the up and up,” he said. “The entire country is looking at Maricopa County and saying, ‘Why can’t you guys run an election like every other state?’” He said Richer is “not going to make any efforts to reassure the voters that their concerns are valid, to be more transparent, to open up the system, to reinstall that trust.”
Heap, who has been in office just over a year, received a perfect score of 100 from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club for the 2023 legislative session. He serves on multiple legislative committees, including Municipal Oversight and Elections.
This year, he sponsored HB 2581, which establishes chain of custody standards for the transfer of ballot boxes, delivery of voted ballots, duplication of ballots, and tabulation of ballots. He sponsored HB 2852, which would prohibit Arizona and its political subdivisions from being a member or entering into an agreement with any multistate voter registration or voter registration list maintenance organization. He co-sponsored HB 2404, which would prohibit recorders from issuing voter registration cards to individuals whose mailing address is outside of Arizona.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Justin Heap” by Justin Heap.
