Norton seeks $2.6M in defamation suit against fellow Republican Yee

Elijah Norton, who lost his bid for state treasurer last week, is suing current Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee for spreading rumors in Republican circles, including that he had a boyfriend who dressed in women’s clothing. 

In the lawsuit, filed Nov. 10 in Maricopa County Superior Court, Norton said that the rumors were false and had caused “impairment of Norton’s reputation and standing in the community, mental anguish, and emotional distress.” 

Norton sued Yee for defamation and portraying him in a false light for rumors that he said she spread in retribution for his refusal to donate to her campaign fund.

Norton is the former treasurer of the Arizona Republican Party and owner of successful insurance businesses that he says bring more than $500 million in annual revenue. He has contributed $6 million to Republican campaigns in Arizona — including his own — since 2020, according to campaign finance reports. 

Yee, also a Republican, has been state treasurer since 2019. Last week, she lost her bid for superintendent of public instruction to Democrat Teresa Leyba Ruiz. 

Norton asked the court to order Yee to pay him more than $2.6 million for damages that he incurred attempting to counteract Yee’s rumors. 

Yee did not respond to a request for comment. 

Norton told the Arizona Mirror during a Wednesday phone call that he wouldn’t have had to spend that $2.6 million on his primary campaign if Yee hadn’t used false statements to recruit candidates to run against him. He added that the rumors lost him supporters and campaign contributions. 

“I don’t think that kind of behavior can be tolerated in politics,” Norton told the Mirror. 

He said that running for office should be about policy and the candidate’s political record instead of personal attacks.

“We need to restore some level of decency to our political climate,” Norton said. 

After Norton’s unsuccessful bid for Rep. David Schweikert’s congressional seat in 2022, he settled a suit with Schweikert and his campaign allies for attack ads that implied Norton was gay. 

Beyond the claims that he had a boyfriend who wore dresses and “daisy dukes,” Norton also accused Yee of falsely saying he had an affair with a married male staffer, that he tried to bribe her to endorse his campaign and that he threatened to physically assault her. 

Norton said that all of those claims are false. 

“Yee’s statements that Norton had a boyfriend who dressed in female clothing and a sexual or romantic affair with his male personal assistant who is married with children were defamatory because they would, from the point of view of a reasonable person in the audience (to wit, socially conservative activists, donors, Republican Party leaders, and Republican primary election voters), bring Norton into disrepute, contempt, or ridicule, or otherwise impeach his honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation,” Kory Langhofer, an attorney for Norton, wrote in the lawsuit. 

In the lawsuit, Norton said that the bad blood between himself and Yee began in September 2024, after he refused to donate to her political action committee. 

“Norton’s spurning of Yee’s demand for money catalyzed in Yee a determination to take vengeance on Norton by publicizing lies about Norton’s personal and professional dealings, with the goal of inducing a primary election challenger to Norton and/or deterring Republican leaders and voters from supporting Norton’s candidacy,” Langhofer wrote. 

Norton announced his run for treasurer in April 2025, and about six months later prominent Republicans and party activists began contacting Norton to inform him about the rumors he accused Yee of spreading. They also told him that Yee was attempting to recruit someone to challenge him in the Republican primary. 

People who Norton lists as alerting him about Yee’s rumors included Schweikert, Andy Biggs’ campaign manager and conservative activist Merissa Caldwell. 

In January, Norton said that Yee persuaded Katherine Haley to challenge Norton in the primary. In the lawsuit, Norton said he believed that the rumors were “material to Haley’s decision to run for Treasurer.”

A month later, Norton said that a staffer for the Haley campaign made a Facebook post saying that Haley was “running against a guy whose boyfriend wears girly clothes.”

After that he continued to hear the same rumors from fellow Republicans, along with claims that he had threatened to physically harm Yee. 

“Yee repeated and republished the same or substantially similar claims to numerous other individuals, including Republican grassroots activists, state and local Republican Party leaders, and political professionals,” Langhofer wrote. 

Norton said that Yee knew the rumors were untrue but spread them anyway, with the intent of damaging his reputation, which would reach the higher legal bar for defamation claims against public figures, like politicians. 

Norton told the Mirror that the kind of rumors Yee was spreading would result in termination if she worked in the private sector, and he wants that kind of behavior to be considered unacceptable in politics as well.