Maricopa County’s big elections feud is getting ugly — and litigious

The two entities in charge of Maricopa County’s elections seem to hate each other.

Republican Justin Heap, the MAGA county recorder elected last year, keeps trying to do things he legally can’t and keeps saying things that are at odds with the truth. The county board of supervisors, which is dominated by officials in Heap’s party, has called out his shenanigans with increasingly pointed ridicule. All the while, both sides have yet to strike a deal on how to run elections in the county.

Now, the courts will decide who is supposed to be doing what.

Last week, Heap filed a lawsuit in county court against the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, claiming the board was engaged “in an unlawful attempt to seize near-total control over the administration of elections” — specifically, that the board was stonewalling him on funding his office and bogarting critical information technology functions he needs to do his job. Notably, he used an outside attorney to file the suit, running afoul of Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who is the official legal representative of county officials.

Tuesday, the board voted to strike back. After three hours spent in executive session, the five-member board unanimously voted to file a motion to dismiss Heap’s suit while also countersuing so that a court can say definitively which election duties are Heap’s and which belong to the county elections department.

In Arizona, county recorders mostly handle voter registration and mail ballots. The elections department, which is overseen by the board of supervisors, handles Election Day voting and the counting of all ballots. However, some duties fall in between and are negotiated between both entities.

“We don’t start fights at the board of supervisors,” Republican board chairman Thomas Galvin warned during Tuesday’s meeting. “We finish them.”

The board is being represented by attorney Kory Langhofer of Statecraft PLLC. Galvin said Mitchell approved Langhofer to represent the board in court. (“The rest of us go by the book,” Galvin said in a text message when asked about Langhofer’s approval.) Filings for the case do not yet appear in the online case docket, and Langhofer did not respond to an email seeking comment.

How it got this bad

The intra-party standoff between the Heap and the county supervisors has been unfolding in public for more than six months. Before Heap took office, the previous board signed a new shared services agreement with the soon-to-be ex-Recorder Stephen Richer that transferred some of the recorder's election duties and capabilities to the county elections department. But when Heap took office, he accused the board of sandbagging him, canceling the agreement and demanding a new one be negotiated.

Those negotiations have been acrimonious, with Heap putting out puffed-up statements and board members like Galvin lambasting Heap’s “games,” “lies,” “tricks” and “pure silliness.” More recently, negotiations have stalled altogether. Tuesday, Supervisor Steve Gallardo — the lone Democrat on the board — criticized Heap for not coming “to the table and negotiating in good faith.”

Heap has done more than annoy Gallardo and Galvin, who is a centrist Republican in the mold of Richer. He’s also irked Republican Supervisor Debbie Lesko, a Trump fan who voted against certifying Arizona’s electoral votes in the 2020 election while she was in Congress.

“I really wish we could have come to an agreement with Recorder Heap,” Lesko said during Tuesday's meeting. “It’s not for lack of trying.”

In addition to criticizing Heap’s lawsuit itself, the board of supervisors also questioned Heap’s decision to choose his own counsel in the suit. Gallardo blasted Heap for seeking outside counsel “without the permission of the county attorney,” which is “really outside his authority.” In a Friday letter to Heap’s so-called attorney, James Rogers of America First Legal, Mitchell demanded that Rogers withdraw from the suit and threatened to report him to the State Bar of Arizona if he continued to act as Heap’s legal counsel.

The court case could take a while to play out, assuming Heap intends to stand his ground. Neither Rogers nor a recorder’s office spokesperson responded to a request for comment. Though 2026 is the big midterm election year, Maricopa County has smaller elections this year on July 15, Sept. 23 and Nov. 4.

“It is imperative to find a resolution before the 2026 election cycle,” Galvin said in a press release. “Certainty and consistency in administering elections is what our hard-working, dedicated employees and our voters deserve.”

If everyone hasn’t learned to play nice by then, it could be rough sailing.

New Times' Zach Buchanan contributed to this report.