Austin Smith sees dead people
This is the fraud you’re looking for … An Agenda by any other name … And the Dems' soft reset.
On March 16, 2024, Loreen O’Moore’s friends and family gathered to mourn her death and celebrate her life.
Which is why former Republican state Rep. Austin Smith will have a tough time explaining how the 55-year-old wife and mother signed his candidate nomination petition that very day.
Smith — the former Freedom Caucus member and Turning Point employee who pushed “election integrity” legislation, denied the results of the 2020 election and frequently attacked the integrity of Maricopa County election officials — won’t have the “fake media,” RINOs, or a political prosecution to blame for the four felonies and 10 misdemeanors he’s facing.
It seems that prosecutors have Smith dead to rights, if you’ll pardon the phrase.
We dug into the public records in prosecutors’ case against Smith, who ultimately dropped out of his 2024 reelection bid after a challenge to his signatures was filed and Attorney General Kris Mayes announced she was pursuing criminal charges.
Smith’s case highlights the kinds of actual election fraud that election officials have to deal with. Because Smith is correct that election fraud is real — just not in the form of bamboo ballots or AI algorithms that change your vote. The real fraud usually comes from unscrupulous candidates, PACs and circulators who are willing to lie and cheat to cut corners.
His case also shows that busting the cheaters — even in some of the most cut-and-dried cases — can take a long time.
Public records indicate that Smith tried to make it appear he walked the neighborhood where O’Moore lived, knocking on doors to gather signatures for his 2024 reelection bid to the state House.
A few of her neighbors are also listed as victims on the indictment and appear on the same petition sheet as O’Moore’s fake signature.
Five of the 10 alleged forgery victims are on that sheet, which Smith affirmed under oath were true signatures. The 10 names on the sheet have addresses on adjacent streets in the 677-home Greer Ranch South development in Surprise.
Someone else actually knocked on doors in the neighborhood about a year ago, though.
O’Moore’s husband, Brian Moore, said a “guy with a gun and a badge,” who identified himself as an investigator with the Attorney General’s Office, wanted to confirm whether the signature belonged to her, which it did not.
“I informed him at that point she had passed away a week before it was signed,” Moore said.
According to her obituary, she passed away 10 days before the date her fake signature appears.
The investigator told Moore that he had already checked with a couple other neighbors to verify whether the signatures were theirs.
One of those neighbors is listed in property records with her first name spelled Kris. However, the signature and the printed name on Smith’s sheet are spelled “Christine,” with the same address as Kris.
Two of the alleged victims named in the indictment, Bruce Bell and Daniel Hernandez (no, not that Daniel Hernandez), already declared in the 2024 legal challenge to Smith’s candidacy that the signatures on the petitions aren’t theirs.
In all, the June 2, 2024, indictment alleges four low-level felonies and 10 counts of “Illegal signing of election petitions” for the fake signatures. That offense is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum six-month jail sentence and up to a $2,500 fine or up to three months of probation.
The revelation of Smith’s alleged forgeries became public just a few days before Mayes announced the indictments in April 2024 of 18 defendants in the so-called “fake electors” scheme, which is probably why Smith’s criminal case has taken so long. The bigger case took months of grand jury investigation with hundreds of witnesses, making it complex to begin with and followed by a landslide of litigation in court, all of which takes resources.
Smith’s attorney, Kurt Altman, said Smith is disappointed the AG saw fit to bring the charges.
“Because it is such an early stage in the matter and we’ve only begun to unravel the allegations, there is not much to be said other than Mr. Smith looks forward to his day in court and the ability to put this all behind him,” Altman said.
The Attorney General’s Office hasn’t fulfilled our records request yet for the investigative report, and office spokesman Richie Taylor declined to comment on the investigative techniques.
But we can use as a model a Maricopa County Attorney report on Proposition 139 circulator Anthony Harris, 54, who’s also accused of forging signatures on petitions.
It was pretty basic shoe-leather detective work. The Maricopa County investigators simply tracked down Harris’ alleged victims and showed them the petition sheets to confirm whether the signatures belonged to them, which we can assume the AG investigator did in Smith’s case, since they made contact with Moore and his neighbors.
Harris, who is scheduled for trial in October, is probably looking at stiffer penalties than Smith if he’s convicted because of his criminal history. A jury convicted him in 1998 of forgery and possessing a forgery device in connection with having a copy machine and counterfeit $100 bills strewn about his home.
That conviction should have disqualified him from working as a petition circulator, even though he’s had his rights restored and the conviction set aside. We’re still trying to learn more about this case — like, how did someone with Harris’ record get hired as a circulator? Did the Prop. 139 campaign or its contractor do a background check? And how did investigators get tipped off about him? We think some of those answers are in the Maricopa County Attorney’s investigative report, but the office shorted us pages from the report and they said that’s all they got, so we’re still trying.
Smith will likely have no choice but to take a plea deal, considering Moore and nine others will likely testify that the signatures are forged.
Smith’s ordeal began in April 2024 when Jim Ashurst, who’s on the Legislative District 29 Democrats board, took him to court, alleging he forged signatures on his petitions.
“The signatures appear to be written by the same person and bear a striking resemblance to Smith’s,” Dem attorney Roy Herrera wrote in the lawsuit.
Smith quit the race and effectively gave up his seat in the bright red district. At the time, he said the election challenge was “silly on its face,” but he dropped out because he didn’t want to rack up legal bills.
He’s racking up legal bills anyway. And he left people feeling violated.
Moore said he was dumbfounded to learn his late wife’s name was forged for political gain and it sickens him to think someone would have the gall to do that. Moore said until recently he was a registered Republican, but he’s become disillusioned by the “political landscape.”
“It solidifies my opinion of politicians, and I hate to be like that,” he said. “I want to be trusting and believe that these people are doing what they’re doing for my benefit but clearly they’re not. … It really makes me sick, she was deceased.”
The Water Agenda
It has been more than two years since Gov. Katie Hobbs announced that her predecessor had been playing fast and loose with the law requiring developers prove they have a 100-year assured water supply.
Since then, some things have changed in the Phoenix and Pinal County Active Management Areas, and some things haven’t changed.
This wasn’t the first time housing developers had sparred with Arizona officials over water, of course.
But it sparked legal battles that continue today.
In this week’s edition of the Water Agenda, we dig into the lawsuits, the legislation this battle is inspiring and the potential for Hobbs to take even more executive actions to bypass the Legislature.
Subscribe to the Water Agenda for deep dives into the legal battles and water wars that will shape our state.
The Education Agenda
The Arizona Board of Regents will say goodbye to 12-year member Fred DuVal at the end of the year.
In this week’s Education Agenda, we spoke with DuVal about his time as a regent and the current strain from Trump’s massive cuts to federal grant funding for Arizona universities.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration remembered Ivy League schools aren’t the only universities with DEI programs to stop and the University of Virginia was victim one.
UVA president James E. Ryan was told by the university board he had to remove diversity programs following a DOJ pressure campaign. Ryan had been changing titles, instead of rooting out DEI — a play similar to what the University of Arizona has done with cultural resource centers.
For more on the education scene — from university news to high school happenings — subscribe to the Education Agenda.
The A.I. Agenda
What, exactly, are data centers?
And why do we need so many of them?
Arizona is quickly becoming a hotbed for the potentially lucrative projects, but they’re straining our electric grid and water supply — and cities are starting to take notice.
Not to mention, these projects aren't always owned by homegrown giants like IBM anymore — foreign capital is reshaping Arizona’s economy, and environment.
In this week’s edition of the A.I. Agenda, we break down the debate about these massive projects sucking up water and using as much electricity as thousands of households — and whether they’re worth it.
Subscribe to the A.I. Agenda to increase your compute power for Arizona’s biggest power struggle.
The Arizona Democratic Party has been in meltdown mode all year, so Wednesday night’s glitchy, chaotic ousting of Chair Robert Branscomb was right on brand.
If you have no idea what we’re talking about, here’s the story so far:
Jan. 18: The Arizona Democratic Party elects Branscomb as the party’s first Black chairman. He beats former Chair Yolanda Bejarano, who had big party backing but supported the party’s ex-treasurer amid financial self-dealing allegations.
April 19: Branscomb sends out an email to state party members accusing Arizona’s U.S. senators and other party bigwigs of threatening him and sabotaging his new leadership role and says racism is a factor.
Also April 19: Arizona’s top elected Democrats fire off their own letter calling Branscomb a liar whose email shows the “bad-faith response we’ve come to expect of the new leadership.”
June 23: Treasurer Greg Freeman warns the party is on track for its worst fundraising year in a decade, and it will only get worse with Branscomb in charge.
June 29: The party’s executive board officially censures Branscomb, citing an email he shared outside official party channels.
July 1: Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announce they’re moving their 2026 coordinated campaign efforts to the Navajo County Democratic Party.
And finally, on Tuesday night, the Dems held a special meeting and voted to remove Branscomb as party chair. It was a two-and-a-half-hour meeting full of technical issues from the online voting system to members not getting a meeting link, per the Captiol Times’ Reagan Priest.
One attendee suggested “restarting the state party,” which might be the first time anyone’s offered a real solution this year.
 |
|
 | A guest post by
|
Great reporting. Thank you.
Small corrections to the last story: it was almost 3 and 1/2 hours for that ADP meeting. It would have been great to be only 2 and 1/2 (I assume that the Capitol Times reference to the shorter time was referring to how much of it was dealing with getting the tech issues straight). And it was on Wednesday night, not Tuesday.