Two very different Republicans hope to challenge incumbent Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in November. One fought to overturn election results in 2020 and 2022, the other doesn't say they were "stolen."
The Republican candidates are state Rep. Alexander Kolodin and former election official Gina Swoboda.
Kolodin is a member of the Legislature's far-right Freedom Caucus and has the backing of Turning Point USA’s political arm. He’s also an attorney.
Specter of 2020 and 2022
After the 2020 and 2022 elections, Kolodin led multiple lawsuits trying to challenge election results.
Kolodin helped file the “Kraken lawsuit” in 2020, which was led by Trump’s former attorney, Sidney Powell.
The suit alleged, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen, foreign interference was involved, voting machines were hacked, hundreds of thousands of noncitizens voted and then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and former Gov. Doug Ducey were involved in the alleged fraud.
“Not only have Plaintiffs failed to provide the Court with factual support for their extraordinary claims, but they have wholly failed to establish that they have standing for the Court to consider them. Allegations that find favor in the public sphere of gossip and innuendo cannot be a substitute for earnest pleadings and procedure in federal court,” District Judge Diane Humetewa wrote in her ruling to throw the case out.
Kolodin was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona. He also had to pay a fine and take mandatory ethics classes.
Arizona PBS host Ted Simons asked Kolodin about his past in a debate on May 14. Kolodin accused Simons of trying to “twist things” because he works for a “liberal media outlet” and said voters are tired of hearing about 2020.
Swoboda and Kolodin were scheduled to participate in a Clean Elections Debate too, but it was canceled when the candidates couldn’t settle on a date that worked for both of them to appear.
In the PBS debate, Kolodin blamed Fontes for bringing trust in state elections to an “all-time low.”
Fontes won the election for secretary of state in 2022, when he beat another state legislator, Mark Finchem.
Finchem is also an election denier.
Kolodin said there are some differences between him and Finchem, joking that Kolodin wouldn’t wear Finchem’s signature cowboy hat.
“I certainly respect Mr. Finchem, but he doesn't have my 15-year career of elections experience, and I think when we're dealing with the stakes of a state like Arizona, where this is the state that decides the presidency. This is the state that sometimes decides control of the United States House of Representatives, it’s incumbent on voters to put the very most qualified person first in that position” Kolodin said.
Kolodin said his political and legal background make him the best fit for the role of secretary of state.
“The Arizona Secretary of State's Office is probably the most important elections official in the country. Arizona is a major swing state, the road to the White House runs directly through the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. It's incumbent that we put somebody in there who's ready to hit the ground day one, not just in terms of knowledge of our election laws, but also political experience,” Kolodin said.
Swoboda is the former chair of the Arizona Republican Party.
She worked at the Secretary of State’s Office under both former GOP Secretary Michele Reagan and Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is now the governor.
Swoboda also chaired the Republican National Committee’s Committee on Election Integrity and served as executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation.
Recently, Swoboda was a senior policy advisor in the Arizona Senate, as well as a staff member working on election legislation for the Senate.
She is also a former Democrat.
Swoboda says she left that party in 2008, because she was put off by a fight between the Democratic National Committee and Michigan and Florida during the contentious presidential primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The two states moved up their primaries and were stripped of their delegates. Then the DNC gave them each half votes for Obama and Clinton, in a way that benefitted Obama.
Since Swoboda switched parties and worked under Hobbs, and has agreed with her and Fontes on their interpretation of various election laws, Kolodin has accused Swoboda repeatedly of being too liberal.
Swoboda laughed at the idea that she’s carrying water for Fontes or Hobbs. She said an important difference between herself and Fontes is that he’s “too political” for a seat that should be somewhat boring.
“We're just too hurt in this state. The population's too hurt and unsure of confidence levels in the election administration for us to have anybody in a position of leadership that wants more to be political than they want to be an administrator,” Swoboda said.
Swoboda was initially running for election to Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, but when former Cardinals kicker Jay Feely jumped into that race, she switched over to the secretary of state’s race.
As for Swoboda’s stance on election security in 2020 and 2022, she’s never explicitly claimed they were “rigged.” Instead, Swoboda says that elections were “stolen fair and square” because Republicans were outmaneuvered and there were issues with election administration.
Swoboda noted that in 2022, several voting locations in Maricopa County had problems with ballot tabulators failing to read ballots because of a printing error.
Swoboda acknowledged a portion of the Republican base is still consumed by 2020, but says that shouldn't be the focus.
“I think there's like two-thirds of the people that are way past done and are like, ‘Please stop. I have problems today, and it's 2026 today, and I don't know how anything you're talking about is possibly going to help me today,’” Swoboda said.
Kolodin’s voter ID measure
Kolodin sponsored a measure this year that voters will get to decide on in November — provided it survives a legal challenge.
It would create new requirements for Arizonans to show ID before voting in every single election.
Currently, voters must show ID when they register to vote and at the polls if they vote in person.
Swoboda and opponents say the measure will devastate mail-in voting because it doesn’t allow for an avenue for voters who mail in their ballots to show ID.
Kolodin dismissed those concerns and said, under his proposal, voters can still vote by mail.
“This is just another example of our friends on the left, sadly, living in a post-truth world, because the ballot measure is one page,” Kolodin said. “Any Arizona voter can read it for yourselves. It's HCR 2001. It's on the Legislature's website. Please give it a look. All this measure does is implement common-sense reforms that 80-plus percent of the people in this state think should already be the law.”
Would the candidates give voter info to the DOJ?
Last year, the Department of Justice demanded that all states turn over voter data, including personal information like addresses and partial Social Security numbers.
Fontes refused, arguing that the data is protected by voter privacy laws and that for him to hand it over would be illegal.
In April, a federal judge sided with Fontes, but the DOJ is appealing the case.
Swoboda says she wouldn’t hand over that information either without a court order.
Kolodin said he’ll comply with the law, whether or not he agrees with it, but bashed Fontes’ approach.
“I think his position that he's somehow some great defender of voter privacy because he's trying to keep your Social Security number private from the federal government — which issued your Social Security number and already knows your Social Security number — is just a sad example of how divorced from facts Mr. Fontes and his political messaging tends to be,” Kolodin said.
Precincts v. vote centers
Under current law, Arizona counties have the option to use precincts or use vote centers.
In the precinct model, each voter has to go to a specific voting location near their residence to cast their ballot.
With the vote center model, a voter can cast a ballot at any voting location in their county and have a ballot printed for them there.
Most counties use the vote center model.
Swoboda and Kolodin both prefer the precinct model. But both advocate for continuing to allow counties to decide for themselves which model to use, and currently Pinal and Mohave counties are the only ones that use precinct voting.
Swoboda said it’s just not feasible to force precincts on every county.
“Do the people in Apache have the ability to get to a voting location? The courts say no, and they say no. Every single election when they let the Navajo Nation stay open an hour later than everybody else to vote. OK? So, over, and over, and over again, they're telling us, ‘No, there is not the availability,’" Swoboda said.
Kolodin supported a proposed ballot measure that would have given voters the chance to establish precinct voting throughout the state, but it didn’t make it out of the Legislature.
“I think that sort of local control is a great thing, that people can get together in their own communities, and implement the type of elections process that gives them the most confidence,” Kolodin said.
The Election Procedures Manual
One thing Kolodin and Swoboda agree on is that they disapprove of how Democratic secretaries of state have handled crafting Arizona’s Elections Procedures Manual — which serves as official guidelines for county officials on how to run elections.
“The procedures manual should not be weaponized every single cycle by whoever's in the office of any particular party to influence the way the election is handled, and I wouldn't do it that way,” Swoboda said.
Fontes lost a court case over his draft of the Elections Procedures Manual in May. He’d added a provision requiring counties to tabulate provisional ballots from voters who show up at the wrong voting location in the county, like with a vote center model.
Pinal County fought that section of the manual, and Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney agreed that Fontes overstepped his authority.
Fontes also tried to add provisions banning voter intimidation in and around voting locations, which opponents argue is a violation of free speech.
Kolodin said Fontes clearly struggles to follow the law.
“I don't think Mr. Fontes is a serious person. He is obviously not up to the job, and it's time to replace him with somebody who is actually qualified for that position, and I would humbly ask for your listeners' votes,” Kolodin said.
Endorsements — and non-endorsements
Neither candidate quite has President Donald Trump’s endorsement, though he’s acknowledged them both in the last few months.
Trump endorsed Swoboda in 2024 when she first ran for GOP party chair. He endorsed her again in January when she was running for Congress, before she switched over to the secretary of state’s race.
In April, Trump spoke at a Turning Point event in Phoenix and gave a shoutout to Kolodin — though he didn’t explicitly endorse him. The president just said, “State Representative Alex Kolodin. Thank you. Thank you, Alex.”
On June 28, Trump reposted a picture of an ad from Swoboda’s campaign showing she was endorsed by the Arizona Police Association. Trump didn’t add any comment himself.
Kolodin also said Swoboda endorsed him in this race, which she denies.
He made the claim when he first announced his candidacy on March 30, 2025, and used a video of her speaking at an event where she said, “I’d be very proud to endorse you, Alex.”
But, Swoboda put out a statement the next day clarifying that she hadn’t been endorsing him for secretary of state.
Kolodin continues to claim that he has her support.
Disagreement over observers
Kolodin repeatedly accused Swoboda of trying to prevent election observers from participating in the process, which she said misconstrues the law.
Swoboda ran a poll observer program from 2020 until this election cycle. As a candidate, she said it would be a conflict of interest to do it this year.
There was a kerfuffle over whether poll workers should be allowed in a jurisdictional election in Pima County last November.
County Recorder Gabrielle Cázares-Kelly said she needed to be given prior notice from the political parties.
Swoboda said there wasn’t any law requiring observers in early voting, which Kolodin interprets to mean she supports excluding observers.
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, Kolodin sponsored a bipartisan bill that moved up the primary election date to ensure that overseas voters would get their ballots in on time. That bill also altered the law to ensure political parties can use observers.
Secretary of state and Maricopa County
An ongoing feud between the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and County Recorder Justin Heap has escalated into a court battle.
The county officials dispute what the recorder’s role is in administering elections and several elements of how the elections should be conducted.
Kolodin says the secretary of state could potentially play a role in that dispute as a mediator.
“The secretary of state's the chief elections officer. They're supposed to always be working with our county-level elections officials. When there's a dispute like this, I will obviously make myself available to the parties to try to work something out. … If it becomes this magnitude, where, in my opinion, the board's intransigence is beginning to jeopardize Arizona voters, then the secretary of state may need to step in in a more forceful way,” Kolodin said.
Swoboda said she’s deeply concerned about the dispute.
“We've never had a spectacularly failed election where it broke down mid-voting in such a way as to potentially disenfranchise people, and I think that's what's coming. And I'm astounded that no one's doing anything, and I feel like I'm like, ‘ire!’ and no one is doing anything,” Swoboda said.
Swoboda says if Kolodin were to become secretary of state, his relationship with the counties would look like that between the board and Heap right now.
“The whole state will immediately grind to a halt as [Kolodin] starts to fight with every single county on the way he wants them to do things. And that is just going from the frying pan into the fire,” Swoboda said.
The primary election will be held on July 21. Early voting is in progress.
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