Regime-approved media are engaged in a seemingly coordinated effort to smear a conservative candidate seeking to unseat an Arizona election official who regularly attacks Americans concerned about the integrity of elections.
A Republican in name only, Stephen Richer became Maricopa County’s election recorder after defeating incumbent Adrian Fontes — a Democrat who now serves as Arizona’s secretary of state — in the 2020 contest. Throughout his campaign, he pledged to “make the Recorder’s Office boring again,” and cast himself as an ardent supporter of election integrity efforts.
Despite these promises, Richer did a complete 180 after being sworn into office. As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway previously noted, the GOP recorder has since defended his Democrat predecessor’s administration of Maricopa’s 2020 election, penned “op-eds at CNN against the type of election audits he conducted to gain power,” and attacked “Republican leaders and voters for their election integrity concerns.”
Not long after becoming recorder, Richer “took the extremely unusual step” of launching a political action committee aimed at electing candidates “who joined him in refusing to acknowledge any problem with election administration.” He also lobbied against a 2022 ballot measure seeking to strengthen Arizona’s voter ID laws, a move his critics claimed is illegal. The initiative ultimately failed to pass, with 50.4 percent of electors voting “no” and 49.6 percent voting “yes.”
These actions don’t even take into account Richer’s role in overseeing Maricopa County’s disastrous 2022 elections, which resulted in an untold number of disenfranchised voters. Rather than work to address Arizonans’ concerns about incompetent
