Top Recorder’s Office official loves to tweet heinous shit at work

The internet is filled with trolls of all kinds. Many ply their trade on X, the Elon Musk-owned social media site formerly known as Twitter, which has become a cesspool of racism, sexism, antisemitism and MAGA boosterism. Encountering them — and the offensive things they say — is now the price of admission on the site.

You’d just hope one of them isn’t helping to run the agency that oversees voter registration in one of the nation’s most populous counties.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. The office, which handles voter registration and mail-in voting for nearly 5 million people, is run by MAGA-aligned election skeptic Justin Heap, who has been mired in a contentious battle over election administration with the Republican-led Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Heap mostly refrains from spouting off on social media. But his chief of staff, former Phoenix City Council candidate Sam Stone, certainly does not.

On his personal @SamThePol account, Stone puts in yeoman’s work filling up the internet with right-wing reactionary shitposts. He has plenty of company in that regard, except that Stone is a top official in an office that helps administer elections for voters of all backgrounds and political parties. He’s also often firing off his incendiary tweets while at work in his taxpayer-funded job, which pays him $150,000 a year, according to county records. Sometimes, Stone’s work calendar shows that he’s tweeting while in the middle of meetings.

Through a public records request, Phoenix New Times obtained Stone’s county building badge log — which shows when he entered and exited the office — and his work calendar for the period of early January to mid-May. New Times then cross-referenced Stone’s tweets with the times he was verified to be in the office or on the clock. Stone posted on the platform 140 times while at work over that period, and only seven of those posts were related to the Recorder’s Office. 

And those non-work-related tweets were hardly birthday wishes and dog pictures.

Dishonest shits, nut jobs and civil wars

On Jan. 6, after Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to acquire Greenland, Stone tweeted that Democrats were standing up for “murderous narco-dictators, totalitarian Jihadist regimes and mass censorship.” His calendar shows that he was scheduled to be taking photos for the Recorder’s Office. Three minutes later, he called Arizona State University President Michael Crow a “dishonest shit.”

The following day, while he was scheduled to be in a meeting about the Access Voter Information Database, Stone tweeted that gym company Planet Fitness “protects perverts.” During an Arizona Association of County Recorders’ meeting on Jan. 15, Stone went off in a series of posts about Democrats and data centers, declaring that people fighting against them are “pawns of degrown nut jobs.” 

Stone was apparently scrolling social media during a mid-January senior leadership meeting, leading him to respond to a tweet about the European Union with “we are all sick of carrying your feckless nations.” Ten days later, he suggested trading California for Greenland in a post while on the clock.

On Jan. 26, Stone testified in a hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court as part of the ongoing legal battle over election administration between Heap’s office and the board of supervisors. During the period that he calendared for that hearing, Stone issued a series of posts hating on Canada and opining about Minnesota’s governor’s race and Europe’s funding of Ukraine. Phone usage in court is significantly frowned upon, though it’s not clear if he was physically in the courtroom at the time.

Two days later, Stone attacked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Democrats and Europe in a series of posts while he was scheduled to be completing an election administrator training course. He called Minnesota “Minnijihadia” and posted 11 other tweets — none of which related to his work duties — while on the taxpayer’s dime.

And that was just January.

While he was scheduled to be in a meeting in early March, Stone wrote that judges blocking Trump’s mass firing of government workers “need impeachment.” The next day, during another meeting, he called CBS a “network full of people who like murderous jihadis more than American patriots.” 

A week after that, during a Recorder Office town hall meeting he was scheduled to attend, Stone wrote that “no woman has ever wanted to boink Elon Musk more than AOC,” referring to New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Later in that same meeting, Stone replied to an account urging people to vote Democrat by telling it to “F off,” adding that “primaries are for purity. General election I’ll take a useless Republican over any leftist. There are no moderate Dems.” Maricopa County has more than 800,000 registered Democrats, many of whom vote by mail, which is overseen by the Recorder’s Office.

While at work the following Wednesday, Stone — without apparent irony — criticized Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for “weaponizing his office.” A few minutes later, he commented on body-cam footage of a woman hitting a patrol vehicle with her car, calling it a “leftist suicide attempt” by someone “trying to become the next Renee Good.” Good was shot and killed in her car by an immigration agent in Minneapolis in January.

One of his most heinous missives came in April, when Stone quoted-tweeted a video of people in San Francisco in the throes of opioid addiction. The people appeared to be doing what’s known as the “fent fold,” which is the involuntary position fentanyl users sometimes assume after ingesting the dangerous substance. “Cow tipping is, actually, a myth. But this…. this has possibilities….” Stone wrote. His calendar shows he was in a meeting about early voting locations.

Five days later, Stone commented — from the office — that St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Vang Her should be “detained” and “deported” after a user shared misinformation about her immigration status. “Every single person who voted for her should be prosecuted of Aiding & Abetting,” he added. The next day, Stone wrote that his top issue for the 2026 midterms is “murderous leftists” and attacked Democrats in various other posts — again, while badge logs showed he was at the office.

Stone is also fond of pontificating about a second Civil War. During a May 7 poll worker training that was on his calendar, Stone wrote, “Why are leftists dedicated to starting a civil war you will lose?” Less than a week later, during a senior leadership meeting, Stone tweeted about starting a second Civil War twice in seven minutes, writing that “the second you pack the court the cold civil war goes hot.”

‘Partisan shit-posting’

New Times reached out to Stone, Heap and the Recorder’s Office to ask about Stone’s social media presence while at work. Specifically, New Times asked whether the Recorder’s Office felt Stone’s tweeting was appropriate given his position, and whether Heap was concerned about appearances of bias given Stone’s frequent attacks on Democrats. None of the parties responded.

The members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which approves budgets for the Recorder’s Office but does not set Stone’s salary, also did not respond or agree to comment on the record. However, the board’s lone Democrat, supervisor Steve Gallardo, has previously laid into Heap for Stone’s social media posts. 

During a January board meeting that Heap and Stone attended, Gallardo referenced several of Stone’s posts, including tweets that said “lots of Democrats” should be tossed from office, that Democrats were “ENEMIES of truth, liberty, freedom, and the American Way” and that it’s “truly amazing how historically illiterate you have to be to vote for Democrats.” In fact, less than 30 minutes before the January meeting with the board of supervisors began, Stone wrote that “we all have to pick sides in the coming civil war.” He added a shrug emoji.

Gallardo didn’t name Stone directly, referring to him only as a member of Heap’s “leadership staff.” But he called Stone’s posts “disgraceful” and said if Gallardo had put out these types of statements while he was working under former Recorder Helen Purcell, she would have “fired my ass.” 

“How are voters supposed to have confidence in your ability to run elections when your leadership staff is saying this stuff?” Gallardo asked Heap. “I have never seen anyone in this county in a leadership position put out this type of statement. Never.” 

Heap feigned innocence, claiming that he’d never seen them and noting that Gallardo hadn’t “identified the member of my leadership team that you’re speaking of.” That’s hard to believe, though, considering many others have taken notice.

Last week, Democratic strategist D.J. Quinlan tagged Heap in a quote-tweet of one of Stone’s posts, in which he opined about Los Angeles’ mayoral primary while sitting in his car. “Why are you forcing taxpayers to pay for @SamThePol’s partisan shit-posting?” Quinlan asked Heap. “This is one of 100’s of inappropriate posts for a person in an election management position. To make it even more flagrant, a majority of these posts are during work hours.”

Being a frequent tweeter at the Recorder’s Office is not new, of course. Stephen Richer, the previous recorder who lost to Heap in the 2024 GOP primary, regularly used the social media site to combat election misinformation and defend county election workers against conspiracy theories. Then again, he pointed out to New Times, he was an elected official and also limited his public discourse to his official sphere of influence.