Not so long ago, the Republicans who ran elections in one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds—Maricopa County, Arizona—largely got along. There were egos and quibbles, sure. But in the face of unyielding attacks on elections led by President Trump, the recorder and board of supervisors—which together split election duties—resolved conflicts without blowing up a delicate system built on trust and cooperation.
Today’s recorder and board, a mostly new cast chosen by voters in 2024, are different. They’re locked in an all-out war over the machinery, money, and operations that make the democratic process possible. Both sides agree that the standoff threatens their ability to carry out November’s midterm elections free of complications for the county’s 2.6 million voters, more than half the state’s total. The recorder’s side describes the situation in dire terms, writing to a judge that “the legal validity of the election results themselves” is at risk. The recorder’s critics fear that the fight could be used as pretext to cancel results MAGA doesn’t like in elections that could tip the balance in Congress.
Before this battle for control fully exploded in recent weeks—with the recorder insisting the Republican-dominated board pay six-figure contempt-of-court fines and election staff facing possible prosecution for setting up ballot drop boxes—he floated an idea through his attorney. Recorder Justin Heap, a Trump ally who was elected two years ago on a pledge to “end the laughingstock elections,” suggested that the two sides mediate their dispute using Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer and election activist who worked closely with Trump to try to reverse his 2020 defeat. “Ms. Mitchell would be ideal,” the attorney wrote, according to records I obtained, which cited “her expertise.”
The suggestion that Mitchell be brought in to broker the conflict astonished county staff still haunted by a 2020 cycle that drew protests at the tabulation center, pressure from Trump and his allies to overturn his loss, years of death threats, and ceaseless trolling from critics. In February, Mitchell told me that “Maricopa County is a complete disaster” and that federal investigators should turn their attention to the desert swing county. The recorder’s proposal to bring her in as a mediator of the dispute went nowhere. But the very idea that a lawyer who plotted to overturn the 2020 election could be a neutral arbiter signaled how differently Heap and the Board of Supervisors see the situation, people involved in the private deliberations told me.
[Read: Arizona is now at the center of election investigations]
Trump has spent his second term trying to “nationalize” elections that are, by constitutional design, run by state and local governments. He’s sought to advance his voter-ID legislation, and pressed the Justice Department to probe his loss six years ago. None of those efforts have yielded very much. But far from Washington, his allies have gained influence inside the local offices that do the hard work of actually administering the vote.
That includes the Maricopa recorder’s office, which over the past year has had striking success in court. Heap last year brought on an Arizona attorney who works for the America First Legal Foundation—co-founded by Stephen Miller, the powerful Trump adviser who supports stricter voter-registration verification and voter-roll purges—to represent him in his fights. The group’s involvement has alarmed the Republican county attorney, whose lawyer argues that the group is usurping her authority and using its representation of the recorder as a “launching pad for an unprecedented power grab.”
American election systems weren’t built for this. The brawl in Maricopa County has exposed the vulnerabilities of election structures that divided functions and duties between different offices, requiring cooperation in the service of democracy. Though the split-authority model worked well for decades, it is fraying under the weight of today’s hyper-partisan and conspiratorial environment.
“This is a new front in what appears to be a long-term play by America First to change how elections are run,” one person involved in the dispute on the board’s side told me. “They want them to be run by not just the Republican Party—but the MAGA movement.”
To his critics, Heap represents a dire threat to free and fair elections. To his supporters, he is a gutsy conservative who is unafraid to challenge the status quo. For an Arizona judge—whose opinions mattered most until Thursday, when an appellate court weighed in—Heap simply made a persuasive case that he is entitled to more power over elections than his office previously enjoyed. Heap’s office did not make him available for an interview.
An attorney and one-term state lawmaker, Heap was bolstered in his 2024 campaign for recorder by support from Charlie Kirk’s Arizona-based Turning Point USA’s political wing and the failed Senate and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. In the primary, he faced a Republican incumbent, Stephen Richer, who had been outspoken in his opposition to Trump-inspired election denial and in his support for the integrity of the voting system. Heap won convincingly. Trump allies welcomed Heap’s ascent to an office that holds sway over election procedures in a county that generally dictates on which side of the red-blue divide Arizona will fall. “I’m confident that Maricopa County is about to get a huge upgrade in its election administration,” Harmeet Dhillon, now a senior Justice Department official, wrote on X after Heap won his race. But the board of supervisors continued to be controlled by Republicans who are more in the mold of Richer—conservative, yes, but unwilling to go along with wild theories that the voting system is rigged.
[Read: The election deniers are winning]
In Arizona, the legislature assigns election responsibilities such as voter registration and early voting to county recorders. Other responsibilities, such as Election Day operations and tabulation, fall under the county boards of supervisors. In Maricopa County, the board’s elections department carries out many of those duties.
After taking office in January 2025, Heap terminated a power-sharing agreement that Richer had made with the previous board in the final months of their tenures—after his primary loss and before the November general election. That agreement transferred the recorder’s IT department—including personnel and about $4.5 million in funding—to the board’s control. Though the idea had been percolating well before Heap’s election, he argued it was punitive and disrupted his ability to carry out his duties. County supervisors sought to negotiate new terms, and Rachel Mitchell, the Republican county attorney, authorized two outside lawyers, including a former state Supreme Court justice, to help Heap negotiate a new agreement. Instead, Heap brought on America First Legal and, last summer, sued the board, which has a 4–1 Republican majority. Heap alleged that the board had illegally taken over IT staff, servers, databases, equipment, and key election functions, including maintaining ballot drop boxes during early voting.
On April 16, following a contentious trial, Heap largely won his case. The judge ruled that the board “acted unlawfully and exceeded its statutory authority by seizing the Recorder’s personnel, systems and equipment and refusing to return them to the Recorder’s control.” He concluded that the board must give those things back or fund a new system for Heap. The judge also found that certain election duties that the board had considered its own fell to the recorder instead.
The ruling complicated an already messy situation. With the recorder and board preparing for the start of early voting, which begins this week for a July 21 primary, the board and election staff said it was impossible on such a short time frame to untangle their complex procedures, implement new protocols, and train staff to fully comply with the judge’s order. An attorney who represents most of the board has warned that the recorder’s “burgeoning cyclone of chaos also threatens to envelop the voters.” The judge refused to pause, but on Thursday, the board won an appeal to stop the changes. In intervening, the appellate court said that the fight was “no mere backroom dispute over accounting principles or organizational charts. It is, by everyone’s assessment, a live conflict hurtling toward real-world consequences in elections about to begin.”
Arizona this fall has a competitive governor’s race, and two House contests that could help determine who controls the chamber. But the dispute over who gets to run the election shows no signs of clearing up anytime soon. In fact, it has only escalated. Heap’s America First lawyer recently threatened possible criminal prosecution of the supervisors and their election staff unless they fully comply with the judge’s order, which has been stayed. Heap has also asked that the board be punished with $100,000 daily fines (which taxpayers would pay, a county official told me). The board argues that a redistribution of election duties risks delays and confusion and envisions a nightmare scenario in which tabulation is conducted by two separate offices. The conflict has already chilled participation among poll workers who are declining to work the election because “they fear the Recorder’s threats of retribution,” the attorney who represents most of the board has said.
During a recent hearing, a judge ordered the two sides to try to work things out. “I know it would be a miracle,” the judge said. Heap on Friday asked the state supreme court to review the appeal court’s decision, and has said he is “fully committed to conducting a secure, orderly, and lawful election while this litigation continues.”
Even in the best of circumstances, pulling off elections is difficult. This one features a president with sagging poll numbers whose administration is determined to prove the 2020 vote was stolen, rising pressure on slow-moving courts to act as arbiters of democratic legitimacy, and a battle for control of Congress with implications for Trump’s agenda. Mix in local fights for control like the one in Maricopa, and it’s little wonder that election officials I speak with are fearful of a disaster.
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