Maricopa County: The Recorder Race that Just Became Critical

Readers of this blog are certainly very focused on elections. And we each have particular ones that we concentrate on. Aside from the all-important Federal races at the top of the ticket, we can (and must) focus on local races that will also have a huge impact.

I live in LD4 (Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler, Mesa), where we are running great candidates for both the AZ House and Senate, and I also pay attention to other legislative races, such as Deborah Howard’s race for the AZ House in LD27. She’s a fantastic candidate, and it’s a district that we’d love to flip.

But up to now, I’ve paid little attention to the race for Maricopa County Recorder. While I’d expect Democratic candidate Tim Stringham to do well in this role, Stephen Richer has held the line against conspiracy theories. He has also worked hard to educate skeptics about the complex and thorough election process here. While extremists can often win in Republican primaries, I had expected that Richer’s incumbency would carry the day, which made it less critical to support the Democrat in the general election.

Something important has changed.

Now Richer has conceded to fellow Republican Justin Heap. This is the second time in a row that a County Recorder has lost who has been accused of malfeasance by election deniers and conspiracy theorists. As many have noted, if both Adrian Fontes and Richer were masterminds of deep plots to steal the election, how did they manage to lose? Yes, I know – since the conspiracy theories are not logical, logical arguments don’t eliminate them. But still.

All that aside, we now have a critical race between an extremist election skeptic versus a strong defender of rational election administration. The Republican contender, Rep. Justin Heap, has sponsored, cosponsored, or at least voted for a number of bills that would be a step backward. For instance, HB2307 prohibits the use of tabulation machines for any city, town, or county election, requiring time-consuming and comparatively inaccurate hand counts.

Tim Stringham is a defender of progress in election management and an impressive candidate who’s already done a lot. You can learn more about him here. But I strongly recommend that readers follow up and do what they can to help him. While we will still have Richer protecting our rights for this election, democracy in Arizona for future elections will be on the ballot this year, and not just for the presidential race or the state and Federal legislatures.

We can’t let the feces hit the fan.

It has become routine for writers and Democratic political leaders to remind voters to fill out the entire ballot, and in particular, to vote down ballot, but we also need to explain the relevance of each race. The County Recorder election, along with other races like the Board of Supervisors, will lead to significant consequences for our county, state, and country.

It is truly critical.