PHOENIX (AP) — Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has fought back against death threats, almost constant harassment and streams of misinformation during his nearly four years overseeing elections in one of the nation's most prominent political battlegrounds.
He couldn't survive his reelection bid. The Republican who relentlessly defended the legitimacy of Arizona's elections lost his primary race this week in a vote that could significantly influence the way elections are run in one of the nation's most-watched counties.
Richer lost to Justin Heap, a state legislator who has questioned certain aspects of how elections are run, in a three-way GOP primary that ended Tuesday. While Richer will remain in office through the November election, his exit early next year will signal the end of a term wracked by controversy. His office, which splits election duties with the county board of supervisors, has had to fend off attacks over the results of the 2020 presidential election, as former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claimed that widespread fraud had cost him the race.
The outcry from a vocal and determined group of Republican lawmakers, local officials and grassroots activists spiraled into protests and threats that ultimately energized the campaign for his ouster.
Richer congratulated Heap, who will move on to the general election, in a post on the social platform X, promising a smooth transition. He also had a message that countered the animosity and distrust in the system that has animated so many Republicans in the state when elections haven't gone their way. Elections have winners and losers, he said: “Accept it. Move on.”
Trump disputed the outcome in each of the six battleground states he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, but perhaps nowhere was the pushback from Republicans as forceful or as long-lasting as in Arizona, where his margin of defeat was less than 11,000 votes.
In the aftermath of the election, Republicans in the state Senate hired Trump supporters led by a firm called Cyber Ninjas to review Maricopa County’s handling of the election, a widely mocked effort that ended up affirming Biden's win.
