AZ Supreme Court takes up scope of Clean Elections’ power in Green Party fraud case

The state’s highest court is set to determine whether the Clean Elections Commission has the power to investigate whether two Green Party candidates fraudulently obtained millions in public campaign funds and then claw back the money if it concludes they did. 

Risa Lombardo and Duwayne Collier, the Green Party nominees for governor and secretary of state, asked the court to preemptively block the Citizens Clean Elections Commission from ordering them to repay a total $3.7 million. The two argued that, even if they did commit fraud, the commission lacks the authority to make them return the funds, and that the proper place to address potential fraud is the criminal court system.

A trial court judge dismissed the suit, saying it was brought too early, while the Clean Elections Commission was still in the midst of its investigation into the candidates. The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed. 

But on Oct. 15, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to consider whether the commission has the legal authority to determine that the secretary of state incorrectly certified the candidates to receive public funds, and if so, whether the commission has the authority to order repayment of those funds. 

Lombardo, Collier and and Republican Scott Neely, who lost his primary for governor to Andy Biggs, are all under civil investigation by the Clean Elections Commission and criminal investigation by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for accusations that they falsified documentation for enough $5 contributions from voters to qualify for a collective $4.7 million in public campaign funds.

In August, the Arizona Mirror exclusively reported that six people who were listed in campaign finance records as having made $5 contributions to all three candidates were adamant they didn’t give any money to the candidates. On the same day, Tom Collins, the executive director of the Clean Elections Commission, sent letters to the three candidates, informing them of the Clean Elections investigation into their campaign finances and warning them that they could be required to repay all or some of the money.

‘With 1,000% certainty’: Voters say candidates faked their donations to get public campaign cash

In the lawsuit, Tim La Sota, an attorney for Lombardo and Collier, argued that the Clean Elections Commission was attempting to overstep its legal authority by “decertifying” the candidates from receiving Clean Elections funding for their campaigns. Only the secretary of state, with the help of the county recorders, can certify that the candidates collected enough $5 contributions to receive public funding, he wrote.

La Sota accused Collins of using the letters he sent to the candidates to bully them into ending their campaigns. The Republican elections lawyer said Collins targeted his clients because of a political grudge, noting that Collins called them “sham” candidates in the letters. 

But that wasn’t his opinion — rather, he was quoting the Arizona Green Party, which initially described Lombardo and Collier as “sham” candidates. That’s because they had no connection to their registered party and numerous ties to the Republican Party. 

Collins invoked the Green Party’s label to demonstrate that the candidates didn’t have the backing of their political party to organize volunteer efforts to help the candidates qualify for public financing, something that regularly happens for Clean Elections candidates. State law bans candidates from paying people to gather those contributions, 

In his response to La Sota’s arguments to the Arizona Supreme Court, Collins explained how difficult it is for candidates to collect enough $5 contributions to qualify for public funding, which contributed to his suspicions about the three candidates under investigation. 

To qualify, gubernatorial candidates must collect 4,000 qualifying contributions and secretary of state candidates must collect  2,500. The last time a candidate for governor qualified was 2014, when two experienced Republican candidates — Ken Bennett, who was secretary of state at the time, and Andrew Thomas, a former Maricopa County Attorney — both qualified. 

Lombardo and Collier, meanwhile, both qualified without the support of their party and without the use of E-Qual, the state’s online portal that allows voters to make the Clean Elections qualifying contributions and sign nominating petitions for candidates. The Green Party candidates and Neely reported that they collected all of their contributions in cash between October 2024 and March 2025, but they never deposited any cash into their accounts until May, immediately before they applied for public campaign funding.

“The Director identified substantial irregularities in the Petitioners’ campaigns that warrant investigation — including suspicious patterns of qualifying contributions, unexplained lump-sum deposits, and inadequate sub-vendor reporting,” Craig Morgan, Collins’ attorney, wrote to the Arizona Supreme Court. 

The Mirror and the Clean Elections Commission found that Lombardo, Collier and Neely listed contributions from nearly 4,000 of the same voters, including more than 2,600 who were listed as giving to all three.

The duplicated contributions across multiple candidates account for nearly 75% of the voters listed as giving qualifying contributions to the trio.

Even as La Sota told the courts that the Clean Elections investigation into the candidates was moving too slowly ahead of the upcoming election, he refused to comply with subpoenas from the Clean Elections Commission, further drawing out the investigation.

La Sota described the subpoenas as “overly burdensome and harassing” and said that his clients would not comply — and that, if they did comply, they wouldn’t be able to supply any additional campaign finance documents to the commission until after the Nov. 3 election. 

Both Collins and the Clean Elections Commission asked the high court to find that it has no authority to interfere with the commission’s investigation.

“Petitioners’ theory rests on the fact that the Secretary certifies candidates, and from that premise, Petitioners extrapolate that the Commission cannot investigate misconduct related to certification,” Morgan wrote. “That oversimplified logical leap has no foundation in the (Clean Elections) Act.” 

The secretary of state doesn’t have power to enforce the Clean Elections Act, he wrote, but only to certify or reject candidates who apply for public funding. Instead, the power to enforce any part of the voter-approved Clean Elections Act lies with the Clean Elections Commission, Collins and the commission told the court. 

“If the Court were to accept Petitioners’ argument, then candidates who are certified through fraud or misconduct would face no repercussions and could unlawfully procure millions of dollars in public funds,” Morgan wrote. “To read the Act that way nullifies the Commission’s authority and allows theft of public money without recourse.”