Wednesday morning, Richer conceded to state Rep. Justin Heap in the GOP primary after preliminary returns showed Heap with a 20,000-vote lead. Richer, who has regularly battled the election-denying MAGA elements of his party, will pass the torch to Heap or Democrat Tim Stringham in Jaunary.
“Elections have winners and, sadly, losers,” Richer wrote on social media. “And in this one, it looks like I’m going to end up on the losing side of the column.”
If that new recorder is Heap, elections in Arizona’s most populous county could be in trouble. A member of the state legislature’s far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, Heap dodged questions throughout the primary about whether the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen.
However, in a celebratory social media post on Wednesday, Heap decried the county’s “laughingstock elections," despite the primary running smoothly enough that he was able to declare victory in less than a day. Heap also set up his November showdown with Stringham as a contest with “national ramifications” and the “second-most important race” after the presidential election.
On that last part, he might be right.
The 2022 elections might have turned out much differently with a Republican other than Richer in the recorder’s office, which handles voter registration, early voting and mail-in voting. Richer has consistently fought off GOP-led election denialism, fact-checking election misinformation on social media and debunking false election claims in a county riddled with conspiracy theories.
Instead of bending to the extreme wings of the Arizona Republican Party, Richer has pushed back against the GOP’s many evidence-free claims of election fraud. Before President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid in July, Richer stated he’d vote for Biden over Trump, who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Doing so made Richer a target of many members of his own party. In June, a video surfaced in which Shelby Busch, vice chair of the Maricopa County GOP and a Republican National Convention delegate, threatened him with death. “If Stephen Richer walked in this room, I would lynch him,” she said. While Busch said the comment was “made in jest,” it was one of many threats and insults Richer has faced from members of his own party, which hoped to oust him from office after one term.
With Heap winning the GOP primary, that effort has succeeded, potentially throwing the door open to election interference should Heap win in November.
State Rep. Justin Heap, who has dodged questions about whether the last two elections were stolen, defeated incumbent Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in the GOP primary.
Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
The MAGA candidate
Heap has refused to give a straight answer on his beliefs surrounding election conspiracies in 2020 and 2022. He’s also trumpeted endorsements from Senate candidate Kari Lake and MAGA Reps. Eli Crane, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar — all of whom have questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections.Heap also pals around with election deniers in the state legislature, including Arizona Freedom Caucus leader Sen. Jake Hoffman, one of Arizona’s fake electors who was indicted in May for his alleged role in attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Hoffman also serves as Heap’s chief strategist and consultant for his recorder campaign.
In his celebratory social media post, Heap thanked Hoffman as well as Turning Point USA, the Valley-based, right-wing conservative group that disseminates stolen election conspiracy theories. Another group that supports election denialism, the State Freedom Caucus Network, congratulated Heap on his win and called Richer “a RINO” — Republican In Name Only — who “did nothing about election integrity in Arizona.”
Republicans outside the MAGA bubble disagree. Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin, a conservative Republican who works with Richer on elections and has fended off the party’s MAGA elements, called the incumbent recorder “a good man with integrity.” Bill Gates, one of two Republican county supervisors not seeking reelection in the wake of election-related threats, called Richer a “good friend” that he’s “proud to have served with.”
“I am grateful for your service to Maricopa County,” Gates wrote, “and for all that you have done to stand up for the integrity of our elections and the employees who run them.”
In a fundraising email for Stringham, a military veteran who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, the Maricopa County Democratic Party lauded Richer as someone who “who stood up to political pressure in his own party.” On social media, Stringham praised Richer for his honesty and wrote that he decided to run for recorder because he saw Richer’s ousting coming “even back then.”
“For all of my Republican friends who are hoping and waiting for the days of the old Republican Party to return — it isn’t,” Stringham wrote. “If you voted for Stephen Richer, I imagine you did so because of his honesty in the face of lies over the last four years.”
Despite his loss, Richer kept a light-hearted tone. The last two county recorders, Richer and current Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, lasted only one term in office, leading Richer to share a friend’s observation.
“The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office is basically like teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Richer wrote, a reference to the Harry Potter series in which professors of the subject hardly ever survive from one book to the next. “It’s cursed!”
But with a significant November election on the horizon, Richer won’t be out of the spotlight just yet. Primary election results won't be official for several days and he has the November general election to prep for after that. There’s no rollercoaster quite like a presidential election with Trump on the ballot, and this will be the third straight.
“So,” Richer said on social media, “buckle up!”
