Amid primary voting, county leader calls on Recorder Heap to resign

Arizona’s midterm primary elections are already underway, with mail ballots already being returned ahead of Election Day on July 21. Despite the ongoing election, one Maricopa County Supervisor is calling for the resignation of the MAGA-aligned county recorder, Justin Heap.

Standing in front of organizers with Living United for Change in Arizona near the board of supervisors chambers Thursday morning, Supervisor Steve Gallardo — the lone Democrat on the board — slammed Heap for wanting the upcoming July 21 primary election to “fail.” He also criticized Heap for filling his office with “political cronies” who don’t know anything about elections and for being at the whims of Turning Point USA and America First Legal, the law firm started by Trump advisor Stephen Miller that is representing Heap in an ongoing elections administration lawsuit against the county. 

“(Heap) is doing everything he can to make this election very difficult,” Gallardo said at the press conference, which was organized to celebrate the county board approving the opening of four additional early voting centers. “He wants us to fail so he can turn to Donald Trump and say, ‘Hey look, Maricopa County can’t conduct an election; we need the federal government to take over our election.’ That is their plan.” 

Gallardo finished by demanding that Heap “stop being a coward” and “step up and do your job.” If not, he said, “resign and allow us to appoint someone that will do their job.”

Approached by Phoenix New Times after the presser, Gallardo more forcefully called for Heap to quit. 

“Yeah! Resign!” Gallardo said. “He should.” 

“I have no confidence in his ability to do his job,” Gallardo continued. “He has proven over the last year and a half that he is clueless when it comes to the responsibility of that office, and it would be best for Maricopa County if Justin Heap would just resign.”

The other four members of the county board of supervisors — all Republicans like Heap, though many of them have criticized him just as robustly as Gallardo has — declined to comment on Gallardo’s call for Heap’s resignation. The Recorder’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Heap and the board of supervisors have been at loggerheads since shortly after he assumed office in 2024. Upon taking the role, Heap tore up an agreement signed by his predecessor that moved some IT infrastructure and elections administration duties to the county elections department, which the board oversees. Negotiations on a new agreement stalled — each side has accused the other of not negotiating in good faith — prompting Heap to file a lawsuit against the board last year.

That battle reached a fever pitch earlier this year, with both sides claiming victories in court. Heap scored an early win, with Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruling that the board had to return certain core functions to the Recorder’s Office. However, the board has since won a stay of that ruling at the appeals court level. The case now sits before the Arizona Supreme Court.

Amid the court case, Heap and his attorney — James Rogers of America First Legal, who is also running for a seat in the Arizona Legislature — threatened that county election workers could face “criminal exposure” if the board approved the use and locations of voting drop boxes, a duty the recorder claimed is his. The board did it anyway. A few weeks later, a special prosecutor began investigating two Recorder’s Office employees after they were spotted on video removing a ballot scanner from the county election center, though they returned it shortly after. Heap demanded the board be held in contempt for initiating what he claimed was a retaliatory investigation.

Heap has also committed notable blunders. His office sent out incorrect mailers to 83,000 voters telling them their voter registrations had been canceled, with emails showing that a Recorder’s Office employee approved them before they were printed. Additionally, the board questioned the Recorder’s Office rejecting an abnormally high number of ballots for bad signatures during a 2025 jurisdictional election, raising the question of whether voters had been improperly disenfranchised.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is also contesting Rogers’ ability to represent Heap in so many matters, saying that her office is the proper legal representative for the Recorder. She has claimed that Rogers and his firm have exerted undue influence over the Recorder’s Office, a complaint Gallardo echoed.

“(Heap) doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing,” Gallardo told New Times. “Turning Point and America First Legal have just bulldozed and taken over that office. He has no control of what is going on in the Recorder’s Office. He is allowing these outside influences to try to stop and hurt our elections.”