Regulators reject GOP candidate Ralph Heap’s bid to settle Clean Elections dispute

The commission that oversees Arizona’s public campaign funding system voted Thursday to reject a settlement agreement with Ralph Heap, a Republican state legislator and a candidate for the state’s utility regulator. 

Heap has been at odds with the Citizens Clean Election Commission since June, when the commission began investigating a complaint that he had violated campaign finance laws. 

Like other Clean Elections candidates, when Heap joined the program in March, he agreed to forgo large donations and money from PACs in exchange for a fixed amount of public funding.

As a condition of their participation, participating candidates agree to follow Clean Elections rules, including a prohibition on going into debt and increased reporting requirements about how they spend campaign money. 

After the commission began investigating the complaint that Heap failed to report spending on a large number of campaign signs, he twice requested to withdraw from the program. The commission denied those requests because the law requires a candidate to make that request before they qualify for public funding. 

His attorney, Tim La Sota, later said that Heap didn’t have to report his spending on the signs because they’d been provided to him on an extension of credit by the Mesa Sign Shop. 

The five-person commission and Tom Collins, its executive director, have engaged in heated disagreements over Clean Elections law with La Sota during several public meetings since then. 

On Thursday, the commissioners unanimously rejected Heap’s proposal for a settlement that would allow the Republican to leave the program without admitting that he’d broken any rules or laws. In return, Heap said he would agree not to file a lawsuit challenging Clean Elections rules that he thinks conflict with state law. 

In a Sept. 2 letter to Collins that accompanied the proposed settlement agreement, La Sota wrote that the commissioners and Collins had misinterpreted campaign finance law, commission rules and claimed that there were conflicts between the two. 

Collins advised the commissioners not to agree to the settlement. 

In a Sept. 4 letter to the commissioners, Collins wrote that he believed the proposed settlement agreement to be nothing more than a threat to sue the commission if it didn’t stop its investigation into the Heap campaign’s spending. 

Standing in for La Sota during the Thursday hearing, attorney Erica Leavitt told the commissioners that the law required Collins to negotiate a settlement agreement with Heap, instead of recommending the commissioners reject it. 

She also argued that Collins’ letter to the commissioners saying that Heap had failed to produce all of the financial documents requested for the investigation was inaccurate, and that Heap had produced numerous financial documents from the campaign, even though he objected to providing some of them. 

Collins responded that he didn’t think it was appropriate to discuss the Heap campaign’s financial disclosures until his investigation was complete. Collins added that he’d received the financial documents Sept. 9, one day before the meeting and five days after he sent the letter saying that Heap hadn’t provided all the requested documents. 

Collins argued that he wasn’t required to negotiate a settlement with Heap until after his investigation was complete and the commission had found probable cause of wrongdoing. 

Clean Elections Candidates are required to participate in candidate debates run by the commission, and are fined $500 for skipping them. Heap did not participate in the primary or the general election debates.