Let the bloodbath begin as the hard right kicks off its drive to oust Stephen Richer

The MAGA drive to take over Maricopa County kicks into overdrive this week as the hard right begins its drive to unseat Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.

According to MAGA mythology, Richer is the Beelzebub of county government. He’s the devil who singlehandedly denied Kari Lake her due, with backup from his dark angels, the (GOP-run) Board of Supervisors.

Never mind that they’ve provided no evidence or really, any explanation for why a Republican recorder would want to rig an election for a Democrat to become governor. (I quit counting last summer, when they were 0 for 27 in election challenges.)

Look for hard right to try to take over the Board of Supervisors and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, all of which are run by establishment Republicans.

But their No. 1 target is Richer.

Richer wouldn't say the election was stolen

The MAGA conspiracy crowd has been after Richer ever since he took office in 2021 and became one of the shockingly few Republican elected officials in this state who not only didn’t buy into the fiction that Maricopa County’s 2020 election was stolen but was willing to risk his political future by standing up and saying so.

The long knives came out in 2022 when Lake and the rest of Trump’s America First slate managed to turn over the reins of every key state elective office to Democrats. Richer would eventually sue Lake for defamation, over her claims that he intentionally rigged the election against her.

Late last week, the MAGA crowd began teasing its Wednesday announcement for Richer’s Republican challenger.

No less than Sen. Jake Hoffman, the fake elector who chairs the hard right Arizona Freedom Caucus, set the stage.

“Stephen Richer needs to be fired,” he posted Friday on X, formerly Twitter. “His politicization of the Recorder’s office is level 10 From using your tax $$ to push borderline campaign propaganda to his attempt to take credit for voter roll cleanup he was forced to do by the courts… August of 2024 we will FIRE RICHER.”

Then over the weekend came a series of graphics, noting that the mystery candidate already has snagged the endorsement of several key players in the election conspiracy crowd.

“Come meet the Maricopa County candidate endorsed by Congressman Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar,” teased one graphic posted by MAGA’s Merissa Hamilton, who never met an election conspiracy theory she didn’t pass along … often in CAPITAL LETTERS.

His likely challenger could be Rep. Heap

Scuttlebutt is it’s Rep. Justin Heap, R-Mesa.

If so, it makes sense. Heap didn’t respond to my question about why he might want the job, but he checks all the boxes for the election denial crowd.

He ran on a slate that included several election deniers and is a member of Hoffman’s hard right Freedom Caucus.

He’s one of 13 House Republicans who voted to support one of the state’s most ardent election deniers, the now-expelled Rep. Liz Harris, ousted last April for her part in a crazy scheme to publicly accuse Gov. Katie Hobbs and others of secretly working for a Mexican drug cartel.He’s co-sponsored Hoffman’s bills to break up Maricopa County in the aftermath of the 2022 election, and he’s supported bills that would make it harder to run elections and easier to challenge the results.

It was Heap who replied “LOL” when a fellow MAGA supporter posted a GIF mocking Republican Supervisor Bill Gates. This, after Gates’ announcement that he’d been diagnosed with PTSD following three years of threats to his family from the election denial crowd.Heap is also the freshman legislator who last year sent an email to a lobbyist who wanted to meet to discuss deregulation issues in Arizona. Heap’s response was to ask why the lobbyist’s firm hadn’t donated to his 2022 election campaign.

Kari Lake is still: In deep defamation doo doo

“I need to prioritize which meetings I can take,” Heap wrote, in the email obtained by The Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez. “May I ask you, Did Consortium [sic] Consulting donate to my campaign fund? And if not, why did you (or your clients) decide not to do so?”The lobbyist told 12 News’ Joe Dana that he never got that meeting.

Expect this campaign to get ugly

So, yeah, as the hard right prepares to try to gain control of Maricopa County, Heap seems a totally logical choice for chief elections officer.

You don’t think it’s going to get ugly between now and the July 30 primary? Think again.

The entire star-stunted lineup of MAGA is coming for Richer. Abe Hamadeh on Sunday called him “an egomaniacal moron who is mentally unfit to hold elected office.”

Instead, it appears they’re supporting a state legislator who used political donations to prioritize access to his office.

Who better to fight all that mythical corruption in Maricopa County?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Stephen Richer faces an ugly reelection fight from the hard right