Elijah Norton, a failed congressional candidate, is suing his former opponent, U.S. Representative David Schweikert, over a laundry list of complaints, including defamation and emotional distress surrounding attack ads that ran during last year’s GOP primary campaign. Norton's complaints also include comments Schweikert's campaign made to Phoenix New Times.
Norton finished about 10,000 votes behind Schweikert in the primary in Arizona’s First Congressional District, which includes Cave Creek, Fountain Hills, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, and parts of Phoenix.
The business executive from Missouri filed the 31-page lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court in February and wants at least $300,000 in damages for, among other things, unlawful use of the peach emoji.
"The public is sick and tired of watching candidates including Schweikert just smear people," Norton's attorney, Dennis Wilenchik, told New Times. "We are well aware of protected speech and the First Amendment, but that doesn't give them a free license to maliciously defame people."
Elijah Norton sued a former GOP primary opponent for, among other things, unlawful use of the peach emoji.
‘Emotional Distress, Loss of Reputation, Humiliation’
According to the lawsuit, Norton “suffered emotional distress, loss of reputation, humiliation, inconvenience, stress, anxiety, and actual damage.”In all, Norton named 23 defendants in the lawsuit, including Schweikert’s top consultants, Jonathan Huey and Chris Baker. In the complaint, Norton accuses Baker of “unfairly, maliciously, and falsely smearing Norton’s name and reputation,” including “multiple false statements made to the Phoenix New Times.”
Those allegations stem from Baker’s comments about another defamation lawsuit against a political action committee that supported Schweikert last year. CarGuard, the vehicle warranty company that Norton founded in 2015, filed a complaint against the PAC after it ran ads suggesting the company scammed its clients. That case will go to trial in August.
“Baker was quoted in the media as saying that CarGuard engages in ‘widespread, almost nonstop autodials,’” the most recent lawsuit reads. “Baker also falsely, and knowing it was false, claimed for further publication, ‘If you’re buying a warranty from these clowns, you don’t have the ability to hire an attorney and enforce a warranty when that warranty doesn’t pay out.’”
Baker, who is also an attorney, made both of those comments to New Times in May and June 2022.
“Elijah Norton was a two-bit candidate, and now he has turned into a two-bit litigant,” Baker said in response to the recent legal attack, which is the sixth civil lawsuit tied to Norton in the wake of his loss. “He is engaging in vexatious litigation.”
Schweikert’s campaign ran ads that implied that Norton was gay — the ads used a photo of Norton with his arms around a gay man — and therefore unfit for office. That man sued Schweikert in July 2022, claiming the lawmaker did not have permission to use the photo. That case is ongoing. It's at least the third time Schweikert has used sexual orientation to try and discredit opponents.
"Trying to paint someone as being gay has no point to it," Wilenchik said. "It's not true, but … That’s abuse to anybody."
Not All Peaches and Cream
Several pages of the new lawsuit explain how the Twitter account @RejectNorton unlawfully used emojis to allegedly assassinate Norton’s character. Posts by the account “despicably placed emojis of lipstick, female lips, and high heels” to suggest that “Norton was in some secretive, prurient same-sex relationship,” according to the lawsuit.“By including an emoji of a peach (commonly used on Twitter to refer to buttocks),” Schweikert implied that Norton was “engaged in prurient same-sex, sadomasochistic sexual activities." the lawsuit states.
“To make matters even more disgusting,” the lawsuit continues, the account tweeted, “‘Gimp gimp gimp gimp,’ an obviously false and derogatory reference to a sex suit commonly used by people engaging in sadomasochism,” and used “a smiley face emoji that had a zipper over the mouth, furthering the false and derogatory narrative that Norton engaged in sadomasochistic sexual activities.”
Wilenchik told New Times that Schweikert "was no doubt involved with it," but that he couldn't substantiate the assertion.
Schweikert said the account is not affiliated with any of the named defendants. He declined to respond to the merits of the complaint, telling New Times that he “will not comment” on any of his former opponent’s “baseless lawsuits.”
But Tim La Sota, Schweikert's attorney, called the lawsuit "outrageous."
"If this lawsuit is successful, I think we can say goodbye to the First Amendment. I think it is an outrageous abuse of the legal system to try to settle a political grievance by a loser candidate," he said.
In January, Norton was elected treasurer of the Arizona Republican Party. He has indicated plans to run for public office again, but those on the receiving end of his many lawsuits suspect his contentious legal actions could send the wrong message.
“What Norton is saying to Republicans is that he is not a serious candidate and he’s got a glass chin. He can’t take a punch,” Baker said.
“That’s not the reputation you want if you want to have a career in politics. He has become a joke in Arizona Republican politics. With all the lawsuits he’s filing, he comes off as a whiny little baby. It’s a front-row seat to a losing candidate who’s falling apart in the aftermath of losing his race,” Baker added.
In June 2022, Elijah Norton serialized this magazine depicting U.S. Representative David Schweikert as a prison jumpsuit-clad comic book villain.
Elias Weiss
The Misadventures of Shady Schweikert
Norton can dish it a little better than he can take it.In June 2022, Norton's campaign mailed out tens of thousands of comic books titled The Misadventures of Shady Schweikert, in which the titular incumbent congressman was clad in an orange jumpsuit and blue baby bonnet.
The comic book depicted Schweikert behind bars and wearing a prison uniform, although he has never been convicted of a crime. Norton's campaign consultant also told New Times last year that Schweikert had committed "very serious crimes."
Reddit users were quick to label the comic book as propaganda.
Schweikert did not respond with a lawsuit.
In 2022, Schweikert agreed to pony up a $125,000 fine after the Federal Elections Commission accused him of improperly spending campaign cash on fancy dinners, gifts, and airline upgrades a decade ago.
Speaking of Schweikert, Wilenchik said, "He tries to mask his own inadequacies by hurling a bunch of stuff against the wall," such as "depicting boots up people’s rectums."
