The latest twist in the long battle between the Maricopa County recorder and Board of Supervisors

The Arizona Supreme Court sided with Republican County Recorder Justin Heap this week, dealing a blow to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which now must give Heap the resources he says his office needs to conduct upcoming elections.

This is the latest move in the long and heated battle between the county’s leaders over who gets to control what parts of elections operations in one of the largest counties in the country. And it comes as early voting is already underway and our state's primary elections are just around the corner.

Stephanie Murray is covering the story for the Arizona Republic. She joined The Show to talk about the latest.

Elections

Timeline: Maricopa County election fight between Recorder Justin Heap and Board of Supervisors

Wayne Schutsky

The case between Heap and the supervisors is ongoing. Stay tuned for updates.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming in. OK. So tell us first, what was in this ruling? The Supreme Court is is reinstating a lower court’s ruling, right?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right. This is the latest twist in this long battle between the county recorder and the Board of Supervisors over election administration in Maricopa County. So this week, the state Supreme Court decided that it would side with this lower court and, basically agree with Recorder Justin Heap that the Board of Supervisors overstepped, usurped his power when it comes to election administration. And what’s really interesting about this ruling is that it makes some changes, to the upcoming primary election, even though we’re right in the middle of it. Ballots have already gone out, people are already voting, but the court decided to to make those changes anyways.

LAUREN GILGER: Let’s talk about what those changes are, what this means for the election that is already underway, essentially. The Board of Supervisors had something to say about that.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: So the Board of Supervisors said they were disappointed, because the election is ongoing. Basically, what is going to happen now is if you’re a voter, you probably won’t notice any changes. What happens now is that the staff, you know, that does these duties, does these functions, they’ll do what they were going to do, but in some cases, they’ll be reporting to, somebody else. If they have been reporting to the Board of Supervisors, now they’ll be reporting to the recorder. And this has come as the recorder and the supervisors have been trying to negotiate, who does what in Maricopa County elections.

LAUREN GILGER: And they’ve been in mediation, right? They were in mediation when this decision came down.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right. And according to the Board of Supervisors, kind of the irony here is that they had reached a consensus on what those shared duties would be right before the court decided to issue this ruling and roll back a stay by a court of appeals and side with the the superior court and Recorder Heap.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so let’s back up for a moment and just talk about what this how this began, right? This all goes back to kind of a power-sharing agreement that the board had made with the former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer before he left office, before Heap came in. And it’s kind of at its root about concerns about election denialism, election integrity, right?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: You know, that is right. Justin Heap had campaigned on, you know, this election skepticism, election denial, and right before, after he had won his primary but before he took office, the board and the recorder, the past recorder, negotiated this new shared services agreement which took some power away from the Recorder’s Office. Once Justin Heap got in, he said, "You know, that’s not going to work for me, you’re you’re stepping on my power," and he sued.

LAUREN GILGER: And this fight has gotten really nasty. I mean, Heap at one point threatened to seek criminal charges against the board. And then there was this odd thing that happened recently, and I wonder what’s going on there because there some of Heap’s employees were sort of caught on camera ... removing a ballot scanner from the offices during one of these small local elections that happened in March. It sounds like there could be charges there?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right, one of Heap’s staff could face a criminal charge, in this kind of taking of a pre-tabulation scanner. Heap has argued that that equipment belongs to his office, so we’ll have to wait and see on that. But I think, yeah, you know, all of this kind of goes to the worries that I hear in Maricopa County that, you know, these elections may not go so smoothly. I should also note that Heap has been relying on kind of legal advice from America First Legal, which is a firm with ties to Stephen Miller, who was a top Trump adviser.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. And County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has gotten involved because of that, arguing basically that Heap’s using or relying on this attorney more than she thinks he should be. What did the Supreme Court have to say about that?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: The Supreme Court denied Heap’s request to put sanctions on Rachel Mitchell, so kind of a siding with her in that whole back and forth.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And and this goes to a broader question about who’s controlling elections here in Maricopa County.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: That’s right. And I think something that has really struck me as I’ve been talking to my sources over the past couple of days trying to make sense of this ruling and what is going to happen next. There was the shared services agreement, you know, they negotiated the new one. Justin Heap fought to get his power back, and he actually ended up getting more power than he would have had if there had been no renegotiation.

And I say that because now the recorder will be responsible for the tabulation of all of the early ballots in Maricopa County. And here where people tend to vote by mail, that’s like 80% of the votes. He’ll be responsible, you know, at the end of the day for tabulating. It’s the same staff, the same machines, but now the buck will stop with him.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And so just this morning, Heap submitted a settlement proposal to the court. We understand the board is in executive session right now. Any details on what that contains?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: I haven’t seen it yet, and the board is in executive session now, like you mentioned. You know, they’re meeting behind closed doors talking about what they’re going to do next. They indicated in their statement earlier this week that they plan to follow the judge’s ruling, and said they, I think the the quote was something like, "They’re looking forward to seeing what the recorder will do with his newfound election administration power."

For his part, Justin Heap had called it, you know, "a momentous victory" for him. So we’ll see if this is the end of the kind of back and forth in court, or if, you know, another legal challenge is on the way.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, last question for you then, Stephanie. Could all of this I guess affect the way that voters think about the elections, right? And as you said, you’ve been talking to voters in Maricopa County, and there have been concerns for years about election integrity in the county from both sides probably. ... Do you think this kind of ongoing back and forth will make voters less confident in a fair election?

STEPHANIE MURRAY: You know, Maricopa County has been at the center of election denialism for the better half of a decade now, thinking back to President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the election in 2020, everything that happened in 2022, and since.

And so we’ll have to see, you know, if there are any issues. That always kind of raises voter skepticism and concern. But what I’m going to be watching for as we get to that primary on July 21 is whether there are any hiccups and whether voters do feel any difference from this. The plan and what the court said they felt will happen is that voters won’t notice it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. Stephanie Murray covers this for the Arizona Republic. Thanks for coming in, Stephanie, appreciate it.

STEPHANIE MURRAY: Thanks for having me.

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