Stephen Richer is out

It’s time you met Tim Stringham … Captain Kelly grounded? … And #GreenShirtGuy continues to inspire.

Yesterday morning, Tim Stringham suddenly became a very important name to know. 

Up until then, the big question in the race for Maricopa County Recorder was whether Stephen Richer, who spent the last four years fending off election conspiracy theories, could fend off Republican primary challenger Justin Heap, an election skeptic who wants to curtail mail-in voting and require hand-counts of election results.

Now the question on many minds is, who will stop the county’s chief elections office from being occupied by a MAGA election denigrator? 

Enter the forgotten Democratic candidate: Tim Stringham.

“If Stephen Richer had won his election, that would have probably left me forgotten in the annals of Arizona local political history. But that's okay, you know?” Stringham told us Wednesday morning. 

As a first-time no-name Democratic candidate, Stringham likely would have little chance against the broadly popular incumbent. 

But when Republicans ousted Richer in favor of the one-term Freedom Caucus lawmaker, Stringham’s chances of success skyrocketed. So did his star power and fundraising prowess — the fight to keep the MAGA Republican out of Maricopa’s top election office will attract national attention and big money.  

Still, it’s not really the outcome Stringham wanted. 

“It absolutely would have been better for the community if they had had two good options for recorder,” he said. 

Stringham is a career military officer and U.S. Navy attorney who didn’t intend to get into politics until he saw the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The fifth-generation Arizonan was working with East European, Middle Eastern and African countries on human rights training, including supporting free and fair elections, when the insurrection went down. 

“I watched January 6 from a hotel room. I remember having my American naval officers uniform on with an American flag on my arm, and thinking to myself, ‘My God, what is going on? Am I in the wrong spot?’” he said. 

Last year, Stringham sat down with Richer, attempting to determine if there was a real path to victory for the anti-Trump Republican. 

And while newspaper columnists were shocked by Richer’s loss Tuesday, Stringham said it was painfully obvious, to him at least, that an anti-Trump candidate couldn’t survive in a county where Republicans love Trump. Democracy needed a contingency plan to guard against Heap and his ilk.

“If I thought that he was going to win the nomination, the truth is, I probably wouldn't have ran for the seat,” he said.

Heap has never publicly stated flat-out that the 2020 or 2022 election was stolen, and he voted against legislation attempting to give lawmakers the right to throw out Arizonans’ votes in the presidential race. 

But he has supported a host of “election integrity” bills that were inspired by election conspiracies, including banning electronic tabulation machines, barring voting centers in favor of precinct-based voting and severely restricting early voting. 

“You absolutely can have concerns about elections,” Stringham said of his opponent. “But if you can't prove any of those concerns, if you can't bring any evidence to bear, if you can't win any court cases, then I think it is a very extreme reaction to say, let's get rid of all early voting and go to precinct only voting, consider hand count voting.”  

Stringham deliberately couches his arguments in the vocabulary of Republicans — framing voting accessibility in terms of individual rights and small government — and says his family and military background and his temperament make him well-equipped to reason with those who believe he’s part of the cabal attempting to steal elections. 

He’ll never win an argument with an election denier in the moment, he said, but with patience, perseverance and time, he hopes to be able to dissuade even the most ardent election critic of their belief that elections are simply rigged against them. 

And while Richer’s time defending Maricopa County’s elections from the deniers and conspiracists is coming to an end, Stringham hopes that even in defeat, Richer can continue to inspire confidence in elections. 

“We now have two elections officials back to back who've lost their reelection bids. If someone was rigging the election, presumably they would start with their own race. So if anything, what Richer has done is absolutely prove the integrity of our elections by running a fair race in which he counted the votes, in which he himself lost,” Stringham said. 

Then again, former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said the same thing when Richer beat him in the 2020 election. Yet the conspiracies continue.

Still up in the air: Vice President Kamala Harris announced she would hold a rally with her vice-presidential pick in Philadelphia next Tuesday, Reuters reported. Harris hasn’t made that pick public yet, but Sen. Mark Kelly has been at the top of the list of candidates. He demurred when he was asked about the VP pick on Wednesday. Kelly did say he planned to be in Arizona next week, pretty far from Philadelphia (where another top contender, Josh Shapiro, is governor). 

Hung out to dry: After Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd was abandoned by the people who said they’d cover her legal costs if she held up the 2022 election certification, her daughter is turning to social media to try to raise money to cover Judd’s legal fees, the Herald Review’s Terri Jo Neff reports. They’re trying to raise $90,000, but it’s slow going so far. They’ve raised about $3,700 (and 33 prayers) as Judd faces criminal charges of interfering with an election officer and conspiracy. 

Looking ahead: Now that the primary election is wrapping up, KJZZ’s Lauren Gilger sits down with Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to talk about preparing for the general election. Fontes is expecting voter turnout to be as high as 90% in November and his office is trying to be “ready for just about anything.”

---

---

Inside look: The Kingman Miner’s Chelsea McDonough hung out at the Mohave County elections center to get a behind-the-scenes view of election night. At the administration building in Kingman, workers brought in ballots and whiled away the hours chatting, voters waited in line and officials kept track of even the most minute details. County Elections Director Allen Tempert said they monitor “every single sheet of paper that was at the polling place here. Every envelope… Every ballot. Everything.”

Still counting: Maricopa County officials had about 100,000 ballots left to process as of Wednesday night, most of which were early ballots dropped off at voting centers on election day. Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates told Mike Broomhead Show that he expects officials will be done processing 95% of the remaining ballots by Friday.

“Weird” is the word of the moment as Dems react to the MAGA crowd, particularly new revelations about J.D. Vance’s bizarre comments. 

They’re also digging up past weirdness, and that’s pulled a Tucson man back into the limelight. 

“Green Shirt guy,” aka Alex Kack, became a national name in 2019 when he couldn’t stop laughing at MAGA hecklers protesting immigration policies at a Tucson City Council meeting. He said he couldn’t help laughing at “just how absurd it really all was.” 

With the latest round of absurdity, that video is popping up again and Kack’s 15 minutes of fame are getting a little longer. (Plus, in Tucson circles he’s getting some local renown for helping manage Pima County Attorney Laura Conover’s successful re-election campaign.)