No prosecutor will take GOP attorney general candidate’s campaign finance case

A top Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general has continued to brag about his fundraising success as the state struggles to find a prosecutor willing to pursue allegations that he violated campaign finance law. 

Rodney Glassman, a frequent candidate for elected office in the Grand Canyon State, is accused of accepting at least 30 contributions above the contribution limit spelled out by state law. 

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, told the Arizona Mirror that the office couldn’t take on the case because of Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is seeking reelection and Glassman might be her opponent in 2026. 

So, Mayes’ office last month sent the complaint to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. But that office also declined to pursue the case because of a conflict of interest: Glassman is a personal friend of Republican County Attorney Rachel Mitchell. That meant MCAO had to find a different county attorney’s office to take up the investigation.

This week, Jeanine L’Ecuyer, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, told the Mirror that it had failed to find another county attorney willing to take over the case, so it is being sent back to the Attorney General’s Office. L’Ecuyer said that most of the county attorneys refused to take Glassman’s case because they already had a large workload with too few employees to handle it. 

The Attorney General’s Office is now on its own hunt to find a county attorney to take the case, Taylor said. 

Glassman campaign attorney Lance Broberg acknowledged in response to questions from the Secretary of State’s Office that some 2024 contributions were in violation of campaign finance limits. He wrote that the over-payments could be attributed to credit card processing fees and that the campaign was in the process of refunding them. 

But the numbers don’t add up. Many of those excess contributions were for exactly $100, the difference between the 2024 and 2025 limits. (Contribution limits are updated for each election cycle, and Glassman began raising money during the 2024 cycle even though his campaign was for 2026.) Credit card transaction fees for WinRed, the donation platform that Glassman uses, are for around 4% of each donation — that amounts to $221.29 for a $5,400 donation, the maximum allowed in 2024. 

The Glassman campaign returned more than $12,000 in illegal excess contributions in the second quarter of 2025, according to campaign finance reports. Those refunds happened well after the 60 days that candidates have to return payments beyond the legal limits — which is only legal if the campaign unknowingly accepted the overpayments.  

Neither the Glassman campaign nor Broberg has responded to questions from the Mirror about the campaign finance violations. 

In the meantime, Glassman hasn’t publicly responded to the allegations against him. But he has continued to boast via social media posts about his fundraising success. 

“Last quarter was another huge win for our campaign!” Glassman posted on the social media site X on Sept. 4. “Raised: $578,000 Cash-on-hand: $2.4 MILLION.”

He bragged in another post that his opponent in the Republican primary, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, and Mayes couldn’t keep up with his fundraising. 

While Glassman has raised more than $1 million, he bolstered that with $1 million from his own pocket. As of June, Petersen had only collected $190,000, but he had $350,000 in the bank, thanks to leftover donations from prior campaigns. 

Mayes raised around $515,000 in the second quarter of 2025, and when added to funds from prior campaigns, she had more than $1 million on hand. 

This is Glassman’s second attempt to become Arizona’s attorney general: He lost the 2022 Republican primary to Abe Hamadeh, who narrowly lost the general election to Mayes. 

Before that, Glassman was Democratic Tucson City Councilman who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Sen. John McCain as a Democrat in 2010. Since registering as a Republican in 2015, he’s made several unsuccessful bids for office, including for corporation commissioner in 2018 and Maricopa County Assessor in 2020, in addition to attorney general.