Clean Elections rejects GOP candidate’s bid to exit the program amid disciplinary proceedings

It’s too late for Republican Arizona Corporation Commission candidate Ralph Heap to back out of the state’s public campaign funding program, the Citizens Clean Elections Commission decided Wednesday — for the second time in as many months. 

In a unanimous vote, the five commissioners chose not to accept Heap’s request to leave the program, which came following a complaint that he violated Clean Elections rules when he failed to report spending any money on a large number of signs for his campaign placed around the Valley ahead of the July 21 primary election.

Tim La Sota, a veteran Republican election attorney who is representing Heap, accused the commission of trying to “put its thumb on the scale” before the general election by blocking his client from backing out of the Clean Elections program. He repeatedly reminded the commissioners that the program, which Heap applied to be a part of and collected 1,500 small contributions to qualify for, was voluntary. 

“When someone hasn’t taken any money, and you still say they have to participate, that’s not voluntary,” La Sota said. “It has to be voluntary. There’s no way it would pass a constitutional muster if it weren’t.”

The Clean Elections Act, which established Arizona’s public campaign funding system, was approved by voters in 1998. Candidates who opt to participate, like Heap did when he joined the program in March, agree to forgo large donations and money from PACs in exchange for a fixed amount of public funding, based on the office they seek. 

As a condition of their participation, candidates agree to follow Clean Elections rules, including making more frequent campaign finance reports than traditional candidates, and to undergo increased scrutiny of those reports. They also are prohibited from doing some things that privately funded candidates can do — like go into debt — and must be more transparent when they report how they spent their campaign cash.

La Sota said that Heap hadn’t spent any of nearly $370,000 in public campaign funding that he’s received. Along with his request to leave the program, Heap returned the $147,000 he received for the primary election, but has not returned the money he was given for the general election. 

Clean Elections rules state that participating candidates can request to leave the program only before they’ve been approved for public funding, not after. 

“This is an untimely request,” Clean Election Commissioner Christina Estes-Werther said, before voting to deny the request. 

La Sota said it was unfair that the commission had already denied an earlier request from Heap to leave the program before he received any money, but after he qualified for funding. Heap qualified for funding on July 20, but the money wasn’t released to him until Aug. 12, when Heap finally agreed to sign an affidavit saying that his campaign finance reports were accurate, KJZZ reported. 

The complaint against Heap said that he didn’t report paying anyone for campaign signs before the primary election, even though signs for his campaign were placed all over the Valley. 

La Sota told the commission that the Mesa Sign Shop had extended a personal line of credit to Heap for the signs. The owner of the shop confirmed that to the commission. On Aug. 27, the commission found “reason to believe” that Heap had violated numerous campaign finance laws and Clean Elections rules requiring him to report loans like the one extended by the sign shop. 

It gave Heap two weeks to amend his campaign finance reports to bring them into compliance with the law and to provide any documentation regarding the loan from the sign shop to the commission. 

During Wednesday’s meeting, La Sota argued that Heap was being unfairly targeted by the Clean Elections Commission and said that he would never recommend a client participate in the program again. 

Heap advanced out of the primary election before receiving any public campaign funding, and would have done so even without the signs he received on credit, La Sota said. 

“He didn’t need your money then and doesn’t really need it now,” he told the commission. 

Republican activist Lisa Everett, who made the complaint about Heap’s signs, told the commissioners before they voted that if Clean Elections didn’t enforce its rules, they were meaningless. 

“He turned in his $5 donations and filled out all the paperwork,” she said. “He was given the instructions, and when he got caught violating them, now he wants to back out. And, to me, that is disrespectful to the whole process. It’s wrong for him to be able to just walk away after violating the rules. It’s simply not acceptable. We should hold people accountable.” 

Conservative activist Merissa Caldwell, who Heap lists as an endorser on his website, told the commissioners that the Clean Elections system was set up unfairly, and that their actions made members of the public question whether they were making fair decisions.

“If someone doesn’t spend the money, they’re returning the money, they’re not going to use that at all, then really, it’s a violation of free speech to keep them locked into that program,” she said. 

Before voting to deny Heap’s request, Commissioner Sam Crump, a Republican, said he took offense to La Sota’s comments that the commission had acted in any way other than fairly and impartially. 

“It seems to me that, whatever problems Mr. Heap is experiencing, he’s brought on himself,” Crump said.