Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes accused Maricopa County’s top voter registration official of playing “immature” political games ahead of the November election.
The two officials are fighting this week because Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, accused Fontes, a Democrat, of withholding a list of felons who don’t belong on the voter rolls and then lying about it.
“Justin Heap is one of those election-denier types who has supported my opponent in this race that's coming up,” Fontes said. “He's, you know, making all kinds of hay out of something that's really a technical issue to benefit his political ally.”
Fontes is up for reelection for Arizona’s top elections job. He lobbed the political allegation against Heap on Sept.
24 in a phone call to The Arizona Republic.
Heap oversees voter registration in Maricopa County, one of the biggest swing counties in the nation. Arizona's most-populous county became a hotbed for President Donald Trump’s bogus election fraud claims in 2020.
The spat kicked off a week before Fontes was set to debate his Republican opponent and Heap’s lawyer, state Rep. Alex Kolodin, for a final time before the Nov. 3 election.
Heap first raised the issue publicly on Sept. 22, saying in a statement that Fontes had failed to provide "timely, complete and usable federal felony-conviction data" ahead of the election.
Fontes, meanwhile, blamed the delay on hard-to-parse data from the federal government.
The issue stems from a 1,600-page Justice Department report that covers data from 2022 and 2023, according to Fontes' office. The report is in a static PDF format, so Fontes has dedicated staff to the time-consuming process of sorting the data by hand and sending it to the county recorders who are charged with overseeing voter registration.
Heap didn’t buy that explanation. Heap said he spoke personally with the Justice Department about the matter in a follow-up written statement.
"I am disappointed that Secretary Fontes would gamble the trust of Arizona voters on a lie,” Heap said.
Fontes, who was the Maricopa County recorder from 2017 to 2021, received another batch of 2026 data to sort through on Sept. 24, he said.
Fontes said his staff is working to get the recorder the data he needs, and added that only a small number of voters are affected by the report. Fontes declined to say how many people are taken off the voting rolls from an average felony report.
“We're talking about a de minimis number of folks. These are records out of the federal district court. These are not Superior Court records, and so it's a much, much, much smaller universe of cases in the first place. And even then, it's a smaller number of names,” Fontes said.
While Heap and Fontes argued, Kolodin took the opportunity to knock Fontes on the issue and promote his own bid for Secretary of State in an online fundraising pitch.
Kolodin denied Fontes' assertion that Heap created a controversy for his political gain in a text message to The Republic.
“The fact that Adrian Fontes thinks criticism from county recorders over his decision to break the law is a political issue is precisely why he is unfit to be Secretary of State,” Kolodin said.
Republican state Sen. Jake Hoffman, the political consultant who recruited Heap and Kolodin to run for office, also capitalized on the drama with his a social media post claiming Fontes had “INTENTIONALLY broken the law.”
Fontes chalked it all up to "silly season" and said Heap is being "silly." Early ballots start going out Oct. 7 for the general election.
"It's unfortunate that he's using his position as an election administrator when he should be administering the election,” Fontes said. “We want to achieve the same goals. He just happens to be trying to exploit this particular issue for political purposes, and that's just too bad."
Stephanie Murray covers national politics and the Trump administration for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. She co-hosts “The Gaggle,” The Republic’s weekly politics podcast. Reach her at stephanie.murray@usatodayco.com, on X and TikTok @stephanie_murr and on Instagram @stephaniemurray.news.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fontes accuses Heap of attacking him on behalf of his GOP opponent
