Mail-in voting in Arizona’s primary election starts in a few weeks, and the two entities that run elections in the state’s most populous county are turf-warring in a political and legal feud that has dragged on for months.
But let’s face it: You’ve probably heard about the battle between Republican Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and the GOP-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. But unless you’re an elections expert or policy nerd, it’s pretty difficult to follow and even harder to get a picture of what it all means without getting bogged down by the wonkish details and piecemeal updates.
Today, we’re gonna try to help.
On the surface, the fight is over the division of responsibilities between the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and the County Recorder, which the two parties are trying to resolve through two separate avenues: negotiations and a legal battle in the courts.
While the dispute shows up publicly as a technical turf war over staffing and duties, what’s driving it is the supervisors’ calcified view that Heap is just not competent enough to be trusted with executing key administrative functions.
Republican Supervisor Debbie Lesko — who supported Heap’s campaign for office and voted to overturn the results of Arizona’s 2020 presidential election when she was in Congress — has led the way on trying to be the board’s Heap whisperer.
But it seems that even she can’t break through.
On Wednesday, she and Chair Kate Brophy McGee sent Heap a letter requesting negotiations “occur in the light of day, not in secret,” but she said on Twitter that Heap responded by requesting the conversations stay behind closed doors.
As the lone Democrat on the board, Supervisor Steve Gallardo has a unique perspective on his GOP coworkers’ efforts.
“My colleagues have worked so hard to extend that olive branch to Mr. Heap. And any time that olive branch gets extended and it looks like there’s an agreement, he turns a 360 on them,” Gallardo said. “We’re 95% there on a shared services agreement, then it blows up.”
As it stands, Heap is on top — for now — in the legal battle.
In April, Maricopa County Judge Scott Blaney ruled that the board improperly took away some computer specialists and responsibilities from Heap’s office in a deal it signed with the previous recorder, just before Heap took office.
The board is appealing that ruling to a higher court, which could rule any day now.
But if the dispute continues to drag on long enough, experts and those involved say it could lead to confusion during this year’s elections.
And maybe that’s the point.
Heap won his campaign walking right up to the line of calling Arizona’s elections rigged. While he was careful to never say that, he used the same well-worn phrases that have become standard in election-denying Republican circles: “questions” about the election, and a promise to “restore confidence” in a system that his allies have done their best to delegitimize since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
The great irony of this situation is that, now, some of Arizona’s stalwart election defenders worry that with Heap at the helm, our elections could actually turn into chaos — because he doesn’t have the skills, temperament, knowledge or willingness to listen to experts needed to make the system function.
And if indeed the elections were to get chaotic, it may just give Heap the pretext to try to meddle in the election and cast doubt on the results if they don’t break the way he wants.
In that scenario, he’s likely to take the simple route of blaming anything that goes wrong on the board.
Among those who are worried about election chaos and confusion is Republican and seven-term (1989-2017) former Recorder Helen Purcell, who filed a brief with the court this week taking the board’s side in the ongoing turf war.
She noted that the recorder doesn’t have a lot of statutory responsibilities in elections. Rather, the supervisors can choose to entrust the recorder with more duties if they have faith in the recorder’s experience and abilities.
And a power struggle in the weeks leading up to the election could engender a shitshow when voters cast their ballots.
“If we have two different entities trying to control that in the polling place, it’s going to be chaos,” Purcell told us. “We need to let this election progress the way it is planned at the present time. I’m not looking at one side or the other — I’m looking at what’s best for the people who are trying to vote in this election.”
That sentiment — that election rules should be set in place well before the contest to avoid confusion — is actually called the “Purcell principle,” and it was created by the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2006, after Arizona lawmakers tried to significantly change voter ID laws shortly before an election.
So, what’s at stake in this wonky turf war? Exactly what Heap railed against on the campaign trail: more doubts about the system, triggered by a chaotic election.
Already, Heap’s tenure as recorder has been plagued by controversy and a seemingly endless string of embarrassing headlines, some of which earned him the distinguished “Best Political Fail” award from the Phoenix New Times last year.
Just to name a few incidents, Heap (in both personal and elected capacity) has:
Sent notices to 83,000 voters, wrongly notifying them that their voter registrations would be canceled
Been chewed out by Supervisor McGee for rejecting 6,000 of 700,000 ballots in the off-year November 2025 election over the signatures accompanying them
Harshly criticized supervisors for not planning enough early voting sites — before he discovered the other two tabs on a spreadsheet outlining the rest of the proposed sites.
Frankly, that’s the beginning of the list.
Heap’s short tenure hasn’t exactly inspired confidence among the supervisors — which is notable, considering four of the five supervisors are fellow Republicans.
“I’ve dealt with Democratic and Republican recorders — I’ve never dealt with a recorder who I truly believe lacks the understanding and confidence to really conduct an election,” Gallardo said. “When you look in the past, whether it’s Purcell or Richer or (Adrian) Fontes, recorders surround themselves with folks who are the industry experts — those who understand all the nuance and logistics of putting together an election. Unfortunately, Recorder Heap didn’t do that.”
He called Heap’s key advisers “political operatives” who “don’t know what they’re doing” and are giving Heap bad advice.
And while Gallardo said the Recorder’s Office is full of long-time professional staff — including some who have worked there for decades — they’ve told him that Heap and his top brass aren’t listening to them.
Former Supervisor Clint Hickman, a Republican who left office last year, similarly doubts Heap’s abilities.
“If you are too lazy, you hire staff to do it,” Hickman told us. “Unfortunately, Mr. Heap looks like he has chosen to rely on his staff to do the job for him. The Board cannot depend on his lack of wisdom … to run an election.”
Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who has since left Arizona and says he doesn’t follow the daily updates of the ongoing battle, emphasized that it’s critical for the recorder and the board to work together, regularly communicate and hash out disagreements.
And in recent memory, it’s the first time feuding has dominated the relationship instead of cooperation.
Richer now says he’s “grateful” that the Republican primary voters “liberated” him from the office. But it’s clear he’s wringing some schadenfreude out of the situation.
“When you sue somebody within the county, you’ve not just burned the bridge, you’ve nuked it,” Richer told us. “I’d imagine that’s a pretty tough thing for Debbie (Lesko) to swallow because it seems like she was disposed to like Heap, and she does a lot to try to communicate with him. She also often goes out of her way to say she voted for Heap in the primary. I would say, ‘Well then, Debbie, you deserve a partner who was transparently unethical, lazy, inattentive and dumb.’”
They’ll be 2028 fake electors soon: Attorney General Kris Mayes is once again asking a grand jury to indict Arizona’s 2020 fake electors, 12News’ Brahm Resnik reports. The AG is back to square one after the Arizona Supreme Court rebuffed Mayes’ request to overturn trial and appeals court decisions that said she screwed up by not giving the original grand jury a copy of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which outlines how Congress should deal with a state that sends in competing slates of electors.
What’d I say?: When Democratic Rep. Anna Abeytia brought her newborn to the Capitol this week, Republican Rep. Nick Kupper decided to use the baby as an excuse to tweet about Abeytia’s previous abortion, which she has spoken about publicly, the New Times’ Clarissa Sosin writes. Kupper tweeted that “it would have been wonderful if all of her kids had been given the same opportunity at life. Abortion is hideous,” and he got dragged pretty hard online, so he deleted the post, which did not stop him from also being dragged in print.
Scottsdale gonna Scottsdale: The business partner of strip-club owner Todd Borowsky, who is the brother of Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowsky, filed a complaint against the mayor alleging she’s part of a “criminal enterprise” and violated campaign finance laws back in 2020, the Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon reports. The two business partners have been in legal fights for more than a decade, and Todd Borowsky is both getting sued by patrons of his strip clubs who say they were drugged and robbed there, and suing the City of Scottsdale for drumming up a “revenge investigation” against him. The mayor is his lawyer in that lawsuit, Scanlon notes.
Speaking of Scottsdale clubbing: Former lawmaker and current Scottsdale City Council candidate Michelle Ugenti-Rita was asked on KTAR’s “Outspoken with Bruce and Gaydos” if congressional candidate Mark Lamb should drop out of his race after allegations came out about him sexting and intimidating victims into silence. Longtime readers will remember Ugenti-Rita was accused of the exact same thing when she was a lawmaker. She said Lamb shouldn’t drop out. (And for more Scottsdale messiness, check out TJ’s interview on KJZZ’s “The Show” yesterday recapping the city’s scandals.)
“Michelle is here, and Michelle has been on both sides of this — she’s accused someone of sexual harassment at the Legislature and been accused herself of sexually harassing a female lobbyist there, so I think you have an interesting perspective on it,” Bruce said, while teeing up the question.
Still secret after 50 years: The Republic and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office went to court to try to unseal grand jury records related to journalist Don Bolles’ assassination, but they lost, the Republic’s Richard Ruelas writes. They were seeking records that would have included transcripts of interviews with witnesses before the grand jury in 1989 and 1990.
Do the 2076 version of yourself a favor. Support local journalism that roots out secrets.
He’s almost got his Clout-Chasing merit badge: Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock, who worked for Republican Attorney General candidate Rodney Glassman back when Glassman was a Democrat challenging John McCain for the U.S. Senate, does not have many nice things to say about Glassman. In one of the funniest columns we’ve read in a while, Morlock dishes on what it was like to work for Glassman, and paints a picture of a self-absorbed political sellout who would “destroy the Constitution for a dinner with Trump.”
“I can honestly say I never met anyone like him. After working for him for six months, I refused to go (to) the voting booth on Election Day because I would have voted for McCain. Twice,” Morlock writes. “Here's a difference between Petersen and Glassman. Both are Eagle Scouts. Good for them. But an adult Petersen probably didn't put that on his business card.”
After blowing up the marriage of her former bodyguard and feeding him “therapeutic” psychedelic drugs that did not seem to help his mental state, former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is now subpoenaing his ex-wife’s therapy file, including the therapist’s notes and all communications with her, the New Times’ Morgan Fisher reports.
But let’s end the week on a less rage-inducing note.
While the rest of us were trying to make sourdough or bingeing “Tiger King” on Netflix, a 13-year-old Arizonan was drumming up a professional sports league.
And it’s one that even out-of-shape reporters might be able to play.
Big League Wiffle Ball is coming to Scottsdale, after Logan Rose (who is now the commissioner at just 19 years old) started the league with his brother Carson.
It’s pretty amazing. The league now has 10 teams across the country and big names like Kevin Costner are backing it.
“We wanted to create something outdoors, fun and competitive,” Rose said in a news release. “And now with these national and regional media partners, our field of dreams is coming to fruition. We’re excited to show Americans that just about every backyard and playground can be a wiffle ball field to create endless fun and memories for friends and families.”
The 2026 summer season starts on Sunday.