Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen late Friday turned down a bid by Abe Hamadeh for a new trial to contest his loss in the attorney general’s race.
But it will not be until Monday that Hamadeh — and his successful opponent, Democrat Kris Mayes — will find out exactly why the judge said he did not present enough evidence for a legal do-over.
In his order, Jantzen said he has been working on a “minute entry,” a type of court order, and hoped to have it done prior to Friday afternoon. “But a weekend fire in the court’s home and some emergencies added to my calendar have prevented completion of that minute entry,” the judge wrote.
The order comes more than six months after Jantzen threw out Hamadeh’s original challenge of the election results.
“The bottom line is, you just haven’t proven your case,” the judge said in December in ruling from the bench after a half-day trial. “There isn’t enough information — I don’t think even slight information — the election was done illegally or incorrectly.”
Hamadeh, in seeking a new trial, said problems unearthed in the legally mandated recount of the close race pointed up the kinds of things that can go wrong in an election. That specifically included findings in Pinal County that 507 ballots had not been counted the first time around, after the initial election results were reported and certified.
While the updated results after the recount closed the margin of victory for Mayes to just 280 votes, that still wasn’t enough to set aside the results.
But lawyers for Hamadeh, the Republican National Committee and two voters argued that Jantzen, who limited their ballot inspections ahead of the first trial, said what happened in Pinal County should allow them to reopen the case and examine more ballots statewide. They contend that will allow them to determine if there actually were more votes for their client than listed on the final tally.
Jantzen said he took their arguments seriously. “This is a close call in a closely contested election,” the judge said in his Friday order. But he said he could not conclude a new trial was appropriate after considering the evidence presented as well as state law and the Arizona Constitution.
In a prepared statement, Hamadeh said he can’t comment on the ruling until he can see the judge’s reasoning. “However, we believe the situation is very simple: The contest was not as close as it stands now,” he said. “If all legal votes are counted, I win this race for attorney general.” And Hamadeh vowed to take his case to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The nature of that appeal will come down to where Jantzen said Hamadeh’s legal arguments fell short — and why Hamadeh believes that allowing his lawyers to examine more ballots will change the outcome.
In ruling against him in December, Jantzen said he had to decide the case based on the examination of 2,300 ballots in three counties by representatives of both Mayes and Hamadeh. That was because of limited time constraints in election contests.
But then came the findings of uncounted ballots in Pinal County. That, his attorneys argued, was enough to have him reopen the case. “Contestants simply ask that we be given the opportunity to apply the Pinal County process across the board to conduct a physical inspection and hand count of ballots that — if the Pinal County issue repeats itself anywhere else in the state — could be outcome determinative in this election,” they told Jantzen. And that, they said, could provide enough evidence for the judge to overturn the results even though Mayes already had been sworn in.
They even argued the fact that Mayes actually has taken office works in their favor.
The earlier legal contest was governed by rules that required election lawsuits be filed and completed within a certain number of days. That, they said, is no longer a factor and Hamadeh should be able to prove his claim that thousands of Arizonans did not have their votes counted.
“The proceedings contestants (Hamadeh and others) requested — apparently like the initial count according to the Pinal County elections director — were rushed according to an artificial timetable over concerns of interfering with the transfer of power of the Office of Attorney General,” his lawyers wrote. “Given that Ms. Mayes has now taken office, any concerns about completing the contest up front are no longer an issue.”
And there is precedent for unseating an incumbent.
That occurred in the 1916 race for governor between incumbent Democrat George W.P. Hunt and Republican challenger Thomas E. Campbell. Campbell was sworn in after the returns gave him a 30-vote edge. But, Hunt refused to leave office while challenging the results, though Campbell did serve as de facto governor in the interim. Ultimately the Arizona Supreme Court, after looking at questions of how people had marked their ballots, installed Hunt in office in late 1917.
Hamadeh has another argument of why he thinks he is entitled to a new trial. He said that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who also was named as a defendant in the legal challenge, knew by Dec. 21 — before the original trial — that the recount had showed discrepancies with the official vote total. But that information, which they contend might have convinced Jantzen to allow inspection of more ballots, was not released to Hamadeh and the public for another eight days, after the trial.
What Hamadeh and his lawyers did not say, though, is that Hobbs, now sworn in as governor, was under order not to release the results until they were formally unveiled in court.