Ralph Heap has a money problem

Arizona’s Republican primary election results delivered great news for Ralph Heap — a Turning Point-aligned lawmaker attempting to move into statewide office as one of Arizona’s top utility regulators.

He unseated incumbent Corporation Commissioner Nick Myers in a narrow victory, becoming one of two GOP nominees for a seat on one of Arizona’s most powerful but little-known elected bodies.

The day before the election, however, Heap received some very mixed news.

He had officially qualified for roughly $370,000 in public funding for his statewide campaign from the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.¹

But the Commission was withholding his funds because he has refused to sign a sworn statement that his campaign finance reports are accurate.

You may be wondering: With $370,000 to fuel his campaign on the line, why would Heap not sign the simple one-page form that declares — under the penalty of perjury — that he didn’t lie on campaign finance forms?

The answer may lie in a campaign finance complaint filed against Heap late last month by Republican activist Lisa Everett, who drove past so many Heap campaign signs that she became curious about who paid for them.

Heap hadn’t yet received his Clean Elections funding, and the only evidence of any sign purchases in Heap’s campaign finance reports is $644 to a sign printer — not nearly enough to pay for the kind of street-blanketing she had seen.

So Everett filed a complaint with the Clean Elections Commission, noting she had seen “what appear to be hundreds of 4’x4’ campaign signs” promoting Heap across the West Valley.

If Everett’s suspicions are correct, Heap could be in big legal trouble.

And that could mean big trouble for Republicans who have set their sights on holding the Corporation Commission in November.

Because Heap has already qualified as a “clean” candidate running with public dollars, his fundraising ability is severely curtailed. Under the Clean Elections program rules, he cannot accept money from political PACs, and he can only raise a limited amount of “seed money” for his campaign.

And now that his Clean Elections funds have been suspended, Heap can’t raise more private money, either. His spending for the statewide office is essentially capped at the $19,000 he has already raised.

Not to mention, Heap can’t drop out of the program without the commission’s approval.

Meanwhile, he’s still under investigation by the Clean Elections Commission. In an email we received as part of a public records request, Clean Elections’ Executive Director Tom Collins made clear to Heap’s lawyer that he was taking the allegations seriously.

And Collins isn’t the only one who thinks something is fishy.

After conceding the race on social media, Myers — the now-ousted current chair of the Corporation Commission — openly bashed Turning Point for ”cheating to take out one of the most conservative energy regulators.”

During a phone interview last week, Myers confirmed he was referring to Heap’s signs.

Arizona voters approved the Citizens Clean Elections Act in the 1998 election in response to AZScam and other bribery and influence-peddling scandals of the day.

The commission has three main responsibilities: To administer the state’s public funding system for political candidates, to act as an independent enforcement agency on campaign finance laws and to serve as a nonpartisan voter education agency.

To qualify for the Commission’s public financing program, Corporation Commission candidates must collect 1,500 separate $5 contributions from individual donors. The process is meant to demonstrate a base of public support, then allow candidates to run with public money instead of wealthy special interests.

All five Republican and Democratic Corporation Commission candidates opted into the Clean Elections program this election cycle — it’s a common choice among utility-regulator candidates to avoid the appearance of industry influence. This election cycle, Corporation Commission candidates are eligible for $369,590 across the primary and general elections.

But while candidates are working toward that funding, they can only finance their campaigns through limited individual contributions and a restricted amount of their own money. Every expense must pass through their campaign account and appear in their finance reports.

Heap didn’t officially qualify for the Clean Elections program until the day before the primary, so he hasn’t received any public money yet.

Now, it seems unlikely he’ll receive any funding at all unless he signs a statement certifying that his campaign finance reports are accurate.

That puts the newly minted general election contender in a difficult catch-22: If Heap signs the statement to unlock his funding, he could face more serious consequences under the separate complaint alleging he lied in those reports.

Since Everett’s complaint, Heap has amended several of his old campaign finance reports, and he released two more reports. None of those revisions or new reports disclose any further spending on signs.

So far, out of eight campaign finance reports Heap filed this election cycle, he only lists one expense on campaign signs: a $644.47 purchase at Mesa Sign Shop in July last year.

If you, like us, have no idea what campaign signs cost, other Republican candidates’ finance reports suggest they’re not cheap.

This election cycle, legislative candidates reported spending thousands at Mesa Sign Shop to advertise within a single district — a fraction of the territory covered by a statewide Corporation Commission campaign:

Political consultants told us a 4’x4’ sign, in three colors like Heap’s, usually runs as much as $50 a piece if you’re buying a small batch — maybe $25 each if you buy in bulk. But that doesn’t include the cost of installation.

And Heap appears to have quite a few signs for someone who only spent $644.

Everett said she also spotted Heap’s signs on a drive to Flagstaff, and a social media post shows them as far north as Lake Havasu City. We documented another in midtown Tucson, and a commenter on Heap’s Facebook page complained about a sign placed in front of the welcome sign for the town of Seligman in northern Yavapai County.

Unless he got an amazing deal on signs, Heap’s seemingly missing campaign spending leaves three obvious possibilities of where the signs came from, all of them problematic:

Collins notified Heap’s campaign of Everett’s complaint on July 6, and gave Heap one week to respond, while warning that silence could be treated as an admission.

Heap’s attorney, La Sota, responded on his behalf and requested an extension. Collins granted it, and moved the deadline to today, July 27.

As Collins awaits Heap’s response to the complaint — and La Sota’s legal explanation for the unreported sign spending — the release of Heap’s public funding remains a separate matter. Collins cannot authorize the money unless Heap signs a form swearing his reports are accurate.

Even if he signs the form, Collins warned in an email to La Sota, “Dr. Heap may be at risk of disqualification from the program under A.R.S. § 16-942(D).”

That statute says a Clean Elections candidate who knowingly breaks certain campaign finance rules could be required to personally reimburse the program for the money they spent and hand over any unspent balance in their campaign coffers.

We didn’t hear back from Heap, nor from La Sota, when we called and emailed both for a response last week.

Heap could seek to withdraw from the program, but because he has already qualified, the process is more complicated. He must send the commission a letter explaining why, and the commission has seven days to vote on whether to let him drop out.

Until then, “the candidate shall not accept any private monies.”

For now, that leaves Heap heading into a competitive general election unable to access the public funding or raise private money to replace it.

And Commissioner Myers, who Heap knocked out in the primary, says that will tank Republicans’ chance at holding the office.

All five current Corporation Commissioners are Republicans. After Democrats lost their only seat in 2024, Clara Pratte and Jonathon Hill are now trying to win the party back a foothold on the powerful utility-regulating body.

Myers argues that Heap’s nomination leaves Republicans weaker heading into November. His loss cost the party an incumbent advantage in favor of a Freedom Caucus-backed lawmaker who ran to Myers’ right — potentially a harder sell to Arizona’s sizable bloc of unaffiliated voters.

And that’s before accounting for the campaign finance fallout, which could leave Heap without the money needed to run a competitive statewide campaign.

Heap was first elected to the Legislature in 2024 to replace his son, Justin Heap, when the younger Heap ran a successful campaign to become Maricopa County’s top election official.

After just a year at the Capitol, Heap jumped into the Corporation Commission race as part of a slate of far-right challengers to more traditional Republicans in statewide races, a campaign orchestrated by Sen. Jake Hoffman.

Originally, Heap was supposed to run alongside former Rep. David Marshall, but Marshall left the race to take over as Navajo County recorder earlier this year.

Neither Heap, an orthopedic surgeon, nor Marshall, a pastor, has utility-related experience.

While the two Republican commissioners who were up for reelection this year — Myers and Commissioner Kevin Thompson — have overseen substantial conservative policies such as repealing renewable energy mandates, their challengers argued they weren’t doing enough to advance President Donald Trump’s energy agenda.

Myers, now ousted after one term, questioned whether Heap gained an early advantage by putting up campaign signs before other publicly funded candidates could afford to do the same.

The second reason, Myers said, was that a coordinated effort by right-wing groups to purge more moderate Republicans from GOP primaries succeeded.