Last month, voters attempted to recall two Tolleson Union High School District board members — but the effort was declared dead after many of the signatures gathered to force the recall were invalidated on technical grounds.
Now, the PAC that tried to recall TUHSD board members Leezah Sun and Steven Chapman is going to court, dragging Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap before a judge to decide whether there is a difference between a “qualified elector” and a “registered voter.”
Quoting the Arizona Supreme Court, the attorneys said “‘a qualified elector is one legally entitled to vote’” and not someone who is necessarily registered to vote.
It’s a novel argument that could have wide-ranging consequences for future attempts by voters to kick politicians out of office.
The PAC, Protecting Their Future, alleged in a lawsuit filed earlier this month that parts of a statute Heap used to disqualify more than 6,000 petition signatures are unconstitutional. The PAC wants Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Greg Como to void two subsections of the statute as they’re applied to recall petitions.
That’s a pretty standard reason to invalidate signatures, but organizers of the recall argue the law has been misinterpreted, at least when it comes to recalls. They argue that all of those disqualified signatures belonged to “qualified electors,” which are not the same as “registered voters” when it comes to recalls.
And the lawyers backing the idea have some serious legal chops, including attorneys Andrew Gould, a former Arizona Supreme Court justice, and Linley Wilson, a former general counsel and deputy chief of staff for the Arizona House.
The PAC also wants Como, an appointee of former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, to order Heap to either “redetermine the validity” of the disqualified signatures or determine that the signatures of unregistered voters and mismatched signatures are valid. The lawsuit asserts that barring someone who’s not a registered voter from signing a recall petition violates their rights to free speech and to recall elected officials.
Heap’s office disqualified the signatures for recalls of Sun and Chapman on the grounds that the petition signers weren’t registered voters.
But the two subsections of the law that Heap was following “together, unconstitutionally conflate ‘qualified elector’ with ‘registered voter,’” the lawsuit states.
PAC spokeswoman Kim Owens said the group aimed to qualify for the May election, but probably won’t be on a ballot until the July primary election if they win in court.
“We turned in over 13,000 signatures and that was on the heels of an override and bond election that failed in record numbers,” Owens said. “The people in the Tolleson district want recourse — this is something they want and it’s unfortunate it’s taking a while to get it done, but we’re very confident that it will happen.”
The Tolleson school board has lately been a hotbed of questionable decisions, shady deals, sexual harassment allegations, and one member recently resigned from his day job after revelations he falsified his résumé.
The PAC said on its recall application that it wanted Chapman and Sun gone because their actions put the district under investigation for lending $25 million to the failing Isaac School District and “entering a questionable land lease of district property for housing.”
The PAC was also dissatisfied with the pair for voting to spend $7 million to move the district office to Glendale, allegedly trying to suppress the speech of parents and racking up multiple complaints of violating the Open Meeting Law.
“(Their) actions show poor judgment and a disregard for the law while test scores and graduation rates in the district continue to fall,” the PAC wrote in its recall petition.
Sun is perhaps best known for resigning from the Legislature in 2024 after the House Ethics Committee heard testimony that she threatened to “bitch slap” a lobbyist and throw her over a balcony. She’s currently on probation for violating a restraining order placed against her by Tolleson city employees and the lobbyist she threatened. Sun also tried to use her status as a lawmaker to interfere in a child custody battle, though those personal hiccups aren’t part of the lawsuit or recall.
Plus, she’s running for Arizona governor on the newly created Independent Party platform.
The PAC needed 8,711 valid signatures to force a recall election for each board member. It gathered 13,124 for Chapman and 13,324 for Sun.
But after signatures were challenged, they came up short by 1,015 signatures to put Chapman on the ballot and 987 short for Sun. So they’ll need the judge to rehabilitate at least that many signatures in order to force the recall election.
The PAC is challenging 6,319 signatures that were disqualified on the grounds they were either not registered voters, their signatures didn’t match signatures on file, or the signers registered to vote after they signed the recall petition.
The suit alleges Heap isn’t legally authorized to disqualify signatures on the grounds of voter registration status and that he’s required to give anyone with mismatched signatures a chance to prove the signature is theirs.
The only grounds by which Heap can disqualify a recall signature is if “the individual was not a qualified elector of the district on the date of signing the petition,” the lawsuit states.
“Without intervention by this Court, the will of the qualified electors will be overridden and the recall elections will not be held,” the PAC attorneys wrote.
The attorneys support their argument with case law from the state and U.S. supreme courts, an Arizona Attorney General’s opinion and the Recall Provision in the State Constitution.
Among the cases they cite is a 1996 lawsuit in which a Cochise County candidate for school superintendent came up short of signatures after challengers flagged 45 signers who had moved before they penned their names and failed to reregister to vote under their new addresses, making them not "properly registered to vote" and not meeting the legal definition of a qualified elector. The court found they were still “qualified electors for the purpose of signing a nomination petition,” and the candidate made it onto the ballot with those 45 signatures.
The attorneys also pointed to a 1988 opinion of Attorney General Bob Corbin, who answered then-Rep. Jane D. Hull’s question of whether the Legislature could enact a law that limited the people who could sign recall petitions to registered voters who voted in the last election.
Corbin concluded that it would be unconstitutional.
And the U.S. Supreme Court held that a “Colorado statute requiring petition circulators to be registered voters violates the First Amendment,” the attorneys wrote.
And then there’s the Arizona Constitution.
“The Recall Provision requires only that petitioners be qualified electors of the appropriate electoral district,” the lawsuit states.
The case is on the fast track and Como has set a scheduling conference for tomorrow.
Legislative Republicans passed a series of bills Monday to tighten eligibility for Arizona’s Medicaid and SNAP programs, branding the effort as the “One Big Beautiful Implementation” package.
Though Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed some of the bills in the package last year, Republicans got ahead of an expected repeat and warned at a press conference yesterday that another veto would be fiscally irresponsible.
The various Republican proposals largely add more conditions to qualify for public benefits, and in many cases, go further than the new requirements under H.R. 1, or Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
As Republican Sen. John Kavanagh put it, the bills are about "snap, crackle and popping fraud in government.”
It’s unclear whether SNAP recipients would still be allowed to purchase Rice Krispies.
(From left) Republican Sens. John Kavanagh and Mark Finchem and Rep. Michael Carbone pitch Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Implementation” package Tuesday — which, in practice, is a bundle of much smaller (and arguably less beautiful) changes.
Among many changes, the bills limit what kind of food SNAP recipients can buy, require the state to perform routine checks to make sure benefit recipients didn’t win the lottery and make hospitals ask Medicaid patients if they’re legal citizens.
And even though the Department of Economic Security is already dealing with a backlog of SNAP applications and decreased staffing, Republican Rep. Michael Carbone said AI tools and data sharing between state agencies could lighten the workload while cracking down on ineligible recipients
“I have to look back at how I was raised, and it was tough — we had mac and cheese and TV dinners, so I understand,” Carbone said. “If there are people who do not qualify for these benefits, they're hurting the people who do qualify.”
Make Recorders Boring Again: Maricopa County Supervisor Mark Stewart hired his own lawyer for negotiations with Recorder Justin Heap about splitting election duties between the board and the recorder, the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen reports. Heap is set to face the board today to answer for the voter disenfranchisement claims his staff made last month, and Stewart suggested the hearing could be used to force Heap’s removal from office if he doesn’t show up. Supervisor Debbie Lesko, meanwhile, suggested the effort to fire Heap, who she has been critical of, is a ruse to get former recorder Stephen Richer back in office, but Richer tweeted that, “you’d have drag (him) back kicking and screaming.”
Home Depot 🤝 Homeland Security: While most immigration prosecutions in Phoenix still start with routine local arrests, ICE agents tried a different approach in January — running license plates in a west Phoenix Home Depot parking lot, the Republic’s Richard Ruelas and David Ulloa Jr report. The sweep led to at least one deportation and another arrest after agents flagged a truck tied to a man who had previously been deported in 2012.
The sunshine portal: Gov. Katie Hobbs announced a new “transparency and ethics reform proposal” that would create a searchable database of state contracts, cap campaign contributions from state contractors and ban lobbyist gifts, according to a press release from her office. The package of ideas would require legislative approval, and no lawmakers have so far introduced the ideas as bills. The rollout comes as Hobbs faces scrutiny over allegations her administration granted rate increases to group home operator Sunshine Residential after its owners made significant campaign donations. Last year, Hobbs vetoed legislation that would have required state contractors to disclose anything of value given to a governor or gubernatorial campaign — a proposal Republicans are reviving this year.
Back to No Labels?: Hugh Lytle, Arizona’s latest candidate for governor, is denouncing legislation that would bar political parties from using the word “independent” in their names, a move that could upend the new Arizona Independent Party he’s running under, Cronkite News’ Dermont Stevenson reports. Republican Sen. T.J. Shope is sponsoring the bill, arguing it’s needed to prevent voter confusion between registered independents and members of a party using “Independent” in its title. In December, the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission voted to sue Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for allowing the name change, arguing it's confusing to voters.
Justice isn’t cheap: Eleven people have already applied for compensation through a fund lawmakers approved last year for the wrongfully convicted, quickly straining the $3 million balance, Mary Jo Pitzl reports for Capitol Media Services. The compensation is largely based on time served, so the payout will vary case to case. Still, Republican Rep. Khyl Powell, who sponsored last year’s false conviction legislation, is now running a bill to require local jurisdictions involved in wrongful convictions to cover the costs.
A soft launch: Democrats with potential presidential ambitions, including Arizona U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, tested their campaign messaging at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, per the New York Times. Kelly hasn’t confirmed a presidential bid, but the DOJ’s attempted indictment has vaulted him into the spotlight.
People in Phoenix love using drugs, Mesa is boring and Gilbert is full of hoity-toity “polite society.”
If that sounds true to you, then you’re on the same wavelength as ChatGPT.
Researchers at Oxford and the University of Kentucky asked ChatGPT more than 20 million questions to ferret out hidden biases about cities, including five in the Valley, per Morgan Fischer at the New Times.
It’s a trove of kind of potentially true-ish observations mixed with stereotypes and racism.
Ain’t that AI in a nutshell?
And the queries the researchers used to find those biases were, shall we say, brutally honest.
As a family publication, we tend to focus on questions like whether a city “has a more independent media,” but we gotta give kudos to the people who asked whether a city “has sluttier people” than other cities.
