Arizona secretary of state candidate Adrian Fontes: 'We've got to protect democracy'

Adrian Fontes burst onto the political radar in the aftermath of an election that left thousands of voters stranded in long lines.

Fresh off a trip to Greece, Fontes said he was riding high on a renewed appreciation of democracy and the importance of the vote when he ran into the human logjam of snaking lines of voters at the 2016 presidential preference election in Maricopa County.

"I come to my neighborhood polling place and it looks like a war zone," he recalled. Police were on scene to deal with a voter who got hit crossing the street, parking lots were jammed and people were backed up in a line that seemingly didn't move.

"I said, 'This absolutely has to stop, this is insane, who's in charge of this mess?'" Fontes said.

He quickly found out, and the next day he filed to run for Maricopa County recorder.

The move launched him on an improbable journey that led to an upset victory, a shake-up of a normally low-profile office and nationwide scrutiny of the way his office ran the 2020 election after Donald Trump's loss.

Today, Fontes is the Democratic nominee for Arizona secretary of state, promising to protect the right to vote and pushing back against the continuing "big lie" that the 2020 election he oversaw was stolen.

Shaking things up in office

Fontes, 52, touts his experience running the recorder's office as he seeks the state's top elections post.

During his four years in office, he wasn't afraid to shake things up, leaving a trail of adverse court rulings as he pushed the envelope on election procedures.

"Nobody knew who the county recorder was; now they do," he joked at a fundraiser this summer.

Under his administration, the county transitioned to vote centers, where people could cast their ballots anywhere in Maricopa County, rather than being bound to their local precinct. He instituted ballot tracking, sending electronic confirmation to voters that their ballot was mailed out and a notification when it returned to the county.

He mailed ballots to every registered voter for city and school district elections in 2017, with little pushback. But when he tried that again for the March 2020 presidential preference election, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs advised against it and Attorney General Mark Brnovich got a court order to stop him.

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In the 2018 primary election, numerous polling locations didn't open on time and technological difficulties complicated operations. The county board of supervisors ordered an audit to ensure the problems didn't recur; the fall 2018 general election ran with few issues.

But the following year, the county Board of Supervisors approved a plan that gave them more control over election day activities, while retaining Fontes' oversight.  

Defending 2020 while looking ahead

Fontes fiercely defends the work of his office in the 2020 election, which continues to draw complaints from election deniers who claim, without proof, that the race was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.

His defense is backed up by numerous audits, including one ordered by the state Senate Republicans. The GOP-controlled board of supervisors is steadfast in its defense that the election was conducted cleanly and fairly.

In February, Fontes wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking an investigation and possible criminal charges against the 11 Republicans who presented themselves to federal officials as an "alternate slate" of presidential electors.

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"At least one person in Arizona with personal knowledge of the truth must come forward and stand up for what's right," he said at his campaign kickoff. "And I did that today."

A U.S. Marine veteran, he said his duty to his country didn't stop when he hung up his uniform, nor when he left the recorder's office after losing a close race in 2020.

"We have got to protect democracy," he told supporters at a fundraiser. "I'll just be wearing a different uniform this time."

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Mark Finchem, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, has made "follow the law" the rallying cry of his campaign. It's a reference to the lawsuit the Republican state attorney general filed in 2020 to prevent Fontes from sending ballots to all registered Democrats for the presidential preference election.

While the law permits the recorder to mail an early ballot to any voter who requests one, Fontes insists there was nothing in the law to prevent him from reaching out to registered Democrats, even if they didn't request a ballot.

Fontes said his aim was to get ballots to voters who typically vote at the polls on election day but who might not have voted in March 2020 because of health and safety concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A judge granted an injunction, which blocked Fontes from mailing the ballots. But the case never got to a ruling on the legality of the matter. The case was dismissed the day after the election.

The state Supreme Court in 2020 found that Fontes illegally issued instructions that would have allowed voters to correct mistakes on their November 2020 early ballots, rather than requesting a new ballot.

Fontes defended his actions, as he did with the early ballots in March 2020, as a way to make the system work better for voters.

"This ruling is bull crap," he wrote on Facebook in the wake of the court ruling. "I've been forced to make an unnecessary and outdated instruction to voters by ignorant lawyers and the AZ Supreme Court who didn't have all of the information in front of them."

Fighting spirit, for better or worse

His temper sometimes got the better of Fontes, such as when he cursed at a voter who complained about lack of clarity in county ballot materials. He later apologized.

At the time, he called himself a "professional fighter," noting his work as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney. He brings that fighting sense to the campaign trail, saying he'll never apologize for his passion.

"Competition is part of my core," he said in early summer. Sports, his legal training and his Marine Corps service feed that fighting bent, he said.

“I’m not going to be the guy who’s going to sit there with one hand over the other on a table and quietly advocate for anything," he said. "But I am going to get things done, behind the scenes, outside of public view.”

Since the matchup with Finchem became clear after the Aug. 2 primary, Fontes has projected a calm demeanor in their few personal encounters.

He constantly refers to Finchem as an "insurrectionist" for his adherence to the false belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and warns of what a Finchem administration would look like.

"If my opponent wins this office, he will destroy the sanctity of our elections," Fontes said an August rally for Democratic candidates.

He points to Finchem's rejection of early voting and his calls to revert to a system where people vote at the polls on Election Day, with limited exceptions for absentee voters. FInchem also wants the millions of ballots cast by voters tallied by hand, not by machines. Fontes portrays himself as a defender of these popular and longstanding election practices.

"Ours is a campaign about American democracy against totalitarianism," he said.

Fontes has garnered national attention, mostly due to the counterpoint he offers to Finchem's election denialism.

He was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in September as part of a group of candidates seeking election-administration posts who Time characterized as defenders of democracy.

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Deep Arizona roots for Fontes

Fontes is a native of Nogales and has a long family history in southern Arizona. He attended Arizona State University for his undergraduate degree and earned his law degree at the University of Denver.

He worked in both the Maricopa County attorney and Arizona attorney general offices before moving into defense work. When he defeated incumbent Republican Recorder Helen Purcell in 2016, he scored a rare win for Democrats in a countywide election. He lost his 2020 re-election bid to Republican Stephen Richer in a close contest.

Divorced, Fontes is the father of three girls.

Marlene Galan Woods, the widow of former Attorney General Grant Woods, is his campaign chair.

Public records show the Fontes campaign had raised $699,714 as of mid-July, the latest data available. Most of it comes from donations under $100 and mostly from local donors.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona secretary of state Democratic candidate 2022: Adrian Fontes