Justin Heap Am1st Legal
an 7 26 mirror
Republican voters in Arizona sent a litany of election deniers to the November ballot, chief among them the nominees for the top three statewide offices. But they’re far from the only ones who advanced to the general election.
The Grand Canyon State has long been at the center of the election conspiracy theories that have become a tenet of the modern Republican Party under President Donald Trump, who has been doggedly focused on false claims of election fraud over the past decade.
As the belief that elections are rife with fraud — at least when Democrats win — has transformed from fringe online discourse into a GOP article of faith, adherents and promoters of election conspiracy theories have been gaining more elected power.
But those views are growing more unpopular among voters, as issues such as affordability and the war in Iran take center stage.
“It is not sustainable, and people do not have an appetite for it. People want to have our elections be a process that helps us pick our leaders and then they want our leaders to lead for us,” Alex Gulotta, All Voting is Local Action’s Arizona state director, told the Arizona Mirror. “It is not winning people’s hearts and minds.”
Despite that, a growing number of election deniers are running for office in Arizona and across the country, according to Kelly Rader, research director at States United Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports state officials protecting elections and has been tracking election deniers since 2022.
Arizona is one of four states — along with Colorado, Wisconsin and Tennessee — that have three or more election deniers running for statewide office, according to their analysis.
Nationally, nearly 75% of the states have an election denier running for a statewide or congressional office, Rader’s research found. That is 139 candidates across the country, among them 21 candidates for governor, nine running for secretary of state and eight running for attorney general, according to the data.
“Election denial is a comprehensive strategy to undermine trust in our elections so that Trump and his allies can challenge election results they don’t like,” Rader said. “As we move through the primaries and sprint toward the fall, we expect that Trump will continue pushing the same old election conspiracy theories. And we are closely watching which election denier candidates echo those claims in the months to come.”
Gulotta echoed those sentiments, adding that Trump’s continued denialism of the results of the 2020 election has helped fuel the fire for candidates to use the same rhetoric.
“I think as long as the president of the United States and his cronies are acting in a way that seeks to prevent voting and is really focused on denying the results of elections, we will continue to see this,” he said. “I am hoping we will grow out of it soon, hopefully another cycle or two.”
Rader said the corrosive effect of lies about election results has far-reaching effects, but was optimistic about the work being done by the nation’s election administrators to educate people and counter the conspiracies.
“Efforts to undermine confidence in legitimate election outcomes don’t just threaten individual races; they erode voter confidence and threaten one of the most important limits on presidential power,” she said. “The good news is that election officials across the country are educating voters, rebuilding trust, and working to ensure another free and fair election this year.”
It isn’t just election denialism that is on the ballot, either.
This year’s batch of conspiracy-minded candidates ranges from QAnon adherents to former “audit” workers. Some of them may be well known to most Arizonans, while others are newcomers to electoral politics.
The old guard
The top of the ticket in Arizona will be a who’s who of people who have been involved in election related conspiracy activities since 2020.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs won the Republican party primary for Governor where he will square off against Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November.
After Trump lost his 2020 re-election bid to Joe Biden, Biggs was front and center in Arizona and Congress trying to “Stop the Steal.” He joined fellow Arizona GOP Congressman Paul Gosar in spreading doubt about the results of the 2020 election and made claims of voter disenfranchisement that were not backed up by evidence.
Former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers said Biggs called him the morning of January 6 asking him to sign onto a letter calling for the decertification of Arizona electors. Biggs, who voted to reject electoral votes for Biden from Arizona and other battleground states, would later allegedly seek a pardon from Trump for his involvement.
Two other prominent election deniers will also be at the top of the Arizona ticket.
State Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who won the GOP primary for secretary of state, has long pushed unfounded claims around the state’s elections.
Kolodin was one of the key attorneys for Trump’s campaign who challenged the 2020 election results in the state and has represented a number of prominent election deniers. Kolodin was sanctioned by the Arizona State Bar in 2023 for his part in lawsuits challenging the 2020 election that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud. He represented Trump’s campaign in the so-called “kraken” lawsuit in Arizona that was based on claims made by people with no actual knowledge of the elections.
In his time in the legislature, Kolodin has pushed for sweeping changes to Arizona election laws largely based on election conspiracy theories.
Then there’s GOP attorney general nominee Warren Petersen, who currently serves as president of the Arizona Senate. He, along with former Senate President Karen Fann, oversaw the partisan “audit” that the Senate conducted in 2021 to scour for fraud in Maricopa County’s election the year before. It found no evidence of fraud, and actually concluded that Biden won the election in the state’s largest county.
Earlier this year, he handed over material from that election review to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice.
Other prominent election deniers also won their primaries, including Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff. On top of believing the 2020 election was fraudulent, Rogers has also engaged with white nationalists and other extremists.
She’ll also likely be joined in the Senate again by Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, who has openly embraced QAnon and spread conspiracy theories about the Department of Child Safety.
In its simplest form, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running a global sex-trafficking ring, control world governments and are trying to bring down President Donald Trump — who is himself single-handedly dismantling the cabal.
Farnsworth and Rogers also will be joined by the QAnon-posting and January-6-insurrection-attending Sen. Janae Shamp, who ran uncontested in her primary.
Another prominent election denier who won their primary is former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb.
Lamb worked with other far-right sheriffs and a group that was involved with the widely debunked film “2000 Mules” to police polling locations in 2022. Lamb won his primary despite lurid allegations about his sex life and the release of a racist chat he had with a border vigilante.
If he wins his election — which is likely, as his district is deep red — he’ll join fellow election denier U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, who unsuccessfully tried to claim election fraud led to his 280-vote loss to Kris Mayes in the 2022 contest for attorney general.
The new class
Among the well-known pushers of conspiracy theories in the state are some new faces that are seeking political power.
For instance, Michelle Altherr is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Brian Fernandez in the Democrat-leaning Legislative District 23.
Altherr worked at the partisan election “audit,” citing it as one of the main reasons she has gotten into politics. She has long been a presence at Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meetings, where she has spread unfounded claims of election fraud.
Another new face is James Rogers, who won his primary for the state House of Representatives in Legislative District 10. Rogers has represented Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a known election denier, as part of the America First Legal law firm, which was started by top Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
The law firm was also behind a failed lawsuit that attempted to change how Arizona counties use drop boxes and maintain voter rolls.
Then there’s Mylie Biggs, Andy Biggs’ daughter, who won an uncontested race to represent Legislative District 14 in the state Senate.
Last year, during an appearance on The Matt MacCurdy program, she said that she doesn’t believe women should hold public office. On that same podcast, the younger Biggs said she has a fondness for conspiracy theories, telling the host to not get her “started on 9/11.”
Early voting for the general election starts on Sept. 19 for military and overseas voters and early voting for everyone else begins on Oct. 7. The last day voters can register to vote and apply for an early ballot is Oct. 5. Voters can find more information and register to vote at this link.
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Experts warn election doubts could bubble up again in November, despite truce in bitter power struggle
Mary Jo Pitzl in Phoenix
Mon 20 Jul 2026
Nearly six years later, Donald Trump remains fixated on his 2020 election defeat.
That year, Republican officials in Maricopa county – Arizona’s largest county and one of the most competitive election battlegrounds in the country – resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state, enduring threats, harassment and enormous pressure from the defeated president.
Their unity has since fractured. In 2024, Arizona swung back to Trump and voters elected Justin Heap – a Trump ally who campaigned on election skepticism – as county recorder, overseeing voter registration and early voting. Heap was recently labeled the “most dangerous election denier in Arizona” by the pro-voter organization All Voting Is Local, after a bitter power struggle erupted between him and the Republican-dominated board of supervisors, which shares responsibility for running county elections.
Justin Heap at a campaign event in Peoria, Arizona, in October 2024. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP
The yearlong standoff – triggered by a realignment of election responsibilities before Heap took office – featured the collapse of a “handshake” deal, a colorful legal battle and an investigation involving the alleged removal of election equipment.
The warring sides reached an unexpected truce on Tuesday, exactly one week before Arizona’s 21 July primary election. But it has done little to ease concerns among Heap’s skeptics, especially those who see the nasty brawl over election administration as a dress rehearsal for November, when Arizona voters will decide a series of fiercely contested races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state and Congress.
“Absolutely, positively not!” Patti O’Neil, chair of the Maricopa county Democratic party, said when asked if the deal bolstered her faith in the upcoming elections. Heap, who will assume new election duties as a result, “has not proven himself to be a good-faith actor”, she said.
Republican members of the board say they are hopeful the agreement will produce what chair Kate Brophy McGee calls “boring elections”.
While tensions in the county have quieted for now, many Arizona election officials still worry about Trump’s determination to relitigate – and his warnings that fraud could cost Republicans the fall midterm elections. “No country can be great without fair and honest elections,” the president said in a primetime address at the White House on Thursday. “Unfortunately, the system we have falls catastrophically short of that standard.”
Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, who held the recorder’s seat a decade ago, said the greater concern for Arizona elections was political interference by the White House.
“The biggest threat is the president, who is lying,” Fontes said.
Turmoil in 2020
In 2020, Maricopa county, home to Phoenix, become “ground zero” for election disruption as Biden edged out Trump in the county, putting him over the top in the state – and the electoral college.
Disbelieving and angry voters flocked to the county’s vote-tabulation center to protest, with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones egging on the crowd. Rumors bubbled up from the crowd’s fevered imagination, including a debunked tale that hundreds of ballots had been shredded, transported to a chicken farm and burned in a henhouse fire.
Alex Jones rallies the crowd in Phoenix in November 2020. Photograph: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images.
Trump envoys tried to persuade legislative leaders to pass laws that would overturn the election results. When the then house speaker, Rusty Bowers, a Trump supporter, refused, the senate president authorized a recount of the 2020 ballots to pacify Trump acolytes. But the so-called “audit” by a firm called the Cyber Ninjas was controversial and amateurish, relying on citizen volunteers who recounted ballots as they spun past on rotating stands. The review produced a surprising result: Biden had won Maricopa county by a slightly larger margin than the official tally.
The turmoil had lasting effects. In 2022, the Republican former TV anchor Kari Lake claimed that a rigged election caused her loss in a closely fought race for governor. Lake never backed down from those charges, even as she ran, unsuccessfully, for a US Senate seat in 2024. Lake is now Trump’s ambassador to Jamaica after overseeing deep cuts at the international broadcaster Voice of America.
Bill Gates was a member of the board of supervisors during the turbulent 2020 election cycle. He hoped the newly forged elections agreement would prevent any semblance of a repeat of 2020’s chaos.
“Hopefully, now it will be a straighter path,” Gates said of upcoming midterm elections. It would be naive to say the acrimony disappears, he added, but the deal untangles issues that had fueled the long fight.
But supervisor Steve Gallardo, the board’s lone Democrat, was skeptical of a new era of peace. He noted that Heap got everything he wanted in the court rulings and then agreed to give back some of those authorities in the settlement with the board.
Any problems in the general election should be laid at the recorder’s feet, Gallardo argued: “He owns November.”
‘Highway to hell’
Heap was serving his first term in the Arizona house of representatives when the Arizona Freedom caucus, a hard-right faction of Republican lawmakers, championed him to run for county recorder in 2024. In his successful primary challenge to incumbent Stephen Richer, who infuriated Republicans for rejecting Trump’s stolen election claims, Heap called the county’s elections a “laughingstock” and declined to say whether the 2020 or 2022 elections were stolen.
Shortly after taking office, Heap became embroiled in a dispute with the board’s Republican supervisors that spiraled into an ugly, intra-party feud, marked by name-calling, subpoenas, fights over ballot drop boxes and even an investigation into a possibly purloined envelope scanner.
Some Democrats called for Heap’s resignation while Heap argued the five-member board had stripped his office of powers guaranteed by state law. One provision, for example, removed the recorder’s ability to have his own information technology, which he wanted to build a voter registration list in his office.
After several months of negotiations, a deal seemed within reach.
Justin Heap at a rally in Glendale. Photograph: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
But then, in June 2025, Heap turned to the courts to take back what he said were his lawful duties. He hired James Rogers, senior counsel with the America First Legal Foundation – a law firm co-founded by Trump’s policy director, Stephen Miller. It furthered suspicions that interests beyond Arizona were trying to influence elections in the country’s second largest voting jurisdiction.
The Republican-led board defended the county’s election administration as “the gold standard”. But Heap disagreed. Echoing the president, he claimed that recent elections had been riddled with “inconsistencies and illegalities”.
“The voters don’t think we’re the gold standard,” he told a local talk-radio host last month. “In fact, that’s why they voted for me to come in and address and fix many of the problems we’ve been seeing for almost a decade at this point.”
Tensions escalated further when Heap charged that the board sent armed deputies to the homes of several of his employees as part of its investigation into his office’s use of a scanner used to process ballot envelopes.
The board cast it as a threat to election security because the scanner removal happened during a local election, was the property of the board and also involved the removal of some ballot envelopes.
Debbie Lesko, a former member of Congress and staunch Trump ally who is now a board supervisor, said the move created “grave chain-of-custody concerns” and forced the board to buy a new scanner at a cost of $70,000 to taxpayers.
Heap disputed that, arguing his office paid for the equipment.
In April – three months before the primary election – a court sided with Heap and returned certain election duties, such as placement of ballot drop boxes and oversight of all forms of early voting, to him. The judge reprimanded the board members for “shenanigans” and “gamesmanship” and urged the parties to negotiate an agreement, rather than continuing to fight in court.
Heap’s attorney proposed Cleta Mitchell – an election denier who echoed Trump’s distrust in elections – as a mediator – an idea the board dismissed immediately.
Ultimately, the case landed with the state supreme court, which unanimously ruled in Heap’s favor – just two weeks before the primary.
While Heap celebrated a “monumental win” for election integrity and the rule of law, it still wasn’t the final word. Closed-door mediations, overseen by a judge, continued. At last, on 14 July, a settlement was reached and signed by both parties.
The pact clarifies election duties in this sprawling county, which has evolved from a Republican stronghold to a swing jurisdiction since Trump lost the state by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020. Both parties applauded the deal.
“We will now run elections lawfully in accordance with what the law says they are supposed to be run,” Heap said at a rally after the settlement was finalized.
Heap did not return a request for comment.
Thomas Galvin, the board’s chairman when the 2024 division of duties was crafted, said the settlement, while not perfect, offered certainty.
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