Reporter links 'sham' Arizona Green Party candidates to Republican operatives

The races for governor and secretary of state are set for November’s general election, but a pair of Green Party candidates are raising questions about whether they’re actually representing their party.

Risa Lombardo and Duwayne Collier are the nominees for governor and secretary of state, respectively, but the Green Party itself is disavowing them. And reporting by Caitlin Sievers has uncovered ties between the candidates and the Republican Party.

Sievers is deputy editor of the Arizona Mirror. She joined The Show to talk about her reporting.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Caitlin, let’s start with who are Risa Lombardo and Duwayne Collier. What do we know about them?

CAITLIN SIEVERS: So, Risa Lombardo is — well, she says she’s not — but she was married to Mike Lombardo, who is a Republican precinct committeeman for Legislative District 2. She says she’s divorced him, but we can’t find any records of that, and they still live at the same address in Phoenix. Risa was also elected as a Republican precinct committeeman for Legislative District 2 in 2024 alongside Mike and has a ton of other connections to local Republican Party members and businesses and whatnot.

Duwayne Collier is running for secretary of state. He does not have as many close ties to the local Republican Party that we could find, but he is a former employee of Uncle Sam Petitions, which is a petition gathering company that gathers signatures to get a lot of Republicans on the ballot.

MARK BRODIE: And we should note that the Arizona Green Party is not backing these candidates, right? They say that they are not actually members of the Green Party.

CAITLIN SIEVERS: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was back in December, the Green Party noticed that these people were running and said, “We have no idea who these people are. We’ve never heard of them. They’ve never come to a meeting.” And in May, the Arizona Green Party voted to actively oppose both of these candidates instead of just not backing them, and they’re calling them sham candidates.

MARK BRODIE: And as you report, there are also some potential violations of Clean Elections rules. What are they alleged to have done?

Caitlin Sievers

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Handout

CAITLIN SIEVERS: So, both Lombardo and Collier’s campaigns have paid large lump sums to a company called Bootstrap Campaigns that is based in Nevada. This company was created on May 12 of this year, and Lombardo’s first payment to it was on June 4th. It has no online footprint at all, and they both paid these huge lump sums to this company to do a wide range of different campaign activities like sending out mailers and doing photography and video and all sorts of other things. Something that even large, established campaign management businesses typically wouldn’t do in-house, right? They would hire subcontractors to do that.

MARK BRODIE: They wouldn’t do all of it themselves.

CAITLIN SIEVERS: Right, right. They would probably hire a subcontractor to do videography and photography and whatnot. But both Lombardo and Collier paid this one company to do all of these things, and it’s a company that was just set up. Clean Elections says that you have to list the specific subcontractors and their addresses for every subcontractor that does work, even if it was through another vendor.

But we found through reports from the U.S. Postal Service that the mailers that both Lombardo and Collier sent out in June came from a Phoenix printing company that was not listed on either of their campaign finance reports. So at least one company subcontractor wasn’t listed, so it seems likely that there are probably others that weren’t listed as well.

MARK BRODIE: What are Lombardo and Collier saying about all this in terms of either the Clean Elections, the alleged violations there, or the fact that maybe they’re actually Republicans?

CAITLIN SIEVERS: Not much. Not much at all. I have reached out to both of their campaigns numerous times via email and phone call, and I’ve not heard from Collier at all. Lombardo got back to me once when I wrote my first story about this in April and sent me an email saying she was a genuine Green Party candidate and that she had been registered as both a Democrat and a Republican, but the Green Party most aligns with her values now.

But I have heard nothing from her since then. In that email, she told me that she and Mike Lombardo had divorced, but they were still living together in May, or at least using the same address. And she has not said anything to explain all of these connections to the Republican Party or any of that since then.

MARK BRODIE: And we should note that, as you report, the company in Nevada is tied to sort of Republican operatives there, right? Like this is not just some random company.

CAITLIN SIEVERS: Yeah. So, the officer positions for that company were originally listed as being held by two men named David Wilson and Bryan McPartlan. And they only held the officer positions for a couple of weeks before they were changed to a man named Chris Silva, who we can’t find — we can’t identify him. But David Wilson and Bryan McPartlan are Republican campaign consultants, well-established campaign consultants who have worked together in California.

MARK BRODIE: Now, obviously, especially in the governor’s race, Gov. Hobbs won four years ago by a very, very slim margin. Is there a thought that if there is a Green Party candidate, that that could in some way sway the outcome of this year’s election?

CAITLIN SIEVERS: That is what the Arizona Green Party is saying. They say that this is the whole reason for these candidates running, right? That in a close election, which this is expected to be, that a Green Party candidate who might get more votes from progressive-leaning Arizonans could take enough votes away from Katie Hobbs to swing the election.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Caitlin Sievers, deputy editor with the Arizona Mirror. Caitlin, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

CAITLIN SIEVERS: Thank you.

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