Bob Lettieri cites financial experience in private sector in bid for Arizona Treasurer's Office

Bob Lettieri is running for state treasurer because he believes he can manage the state's finances better than anyone else seeking the office.

He is one of three Republicans in the Aug. 2 primary, along with incumbent Kimberly Yee and Jeff Weninger, a lawmaker from Chandler. The winner will face Democrat Martín Quezada in the November general election.

Lettieri said he’s “slowly and methodically” gone through the annual report of the Treasurer’s Office and feels he can do a better job.

He references a moment in a recent debate when Yee joked she would like to hire Lettieri to work in the office.

“She said she wanted to hire me because I dig into these ledgers, which apparently means she doesn’t (dig through them),” he said.

Before you vote: What's on your August 2022 primary ballot for Arizona?

The Brooklyn, New York, native attended St. John’s University where he earned an accounting degree.

After taking a job at Deloitte, that company sent him to New York University where he attended a nearly two-year economics program. Later he earned an MBA from Arizona State University.

While working for Deloitte, he was recruited to Arizona to work for Revlon, he said, and then he worked in financial positions for Patchlink, Applied Photonics and Celltrust in Arizona.

He is a partner in SeatonHill, a fractional CFO company. He has two clients there in addition to serving on the board of Celltrust.

Lettieri is married, lives in Scottsdale, and has three adult sons.

Candidate cites experience

Lettieri is a part of a local political group made up largely of John Birch Society members (to which he also belongs) who vet political candidates that call themselves "Constitutional Conservatives."

The John Birch Society is a far-right political group dating to the late 1950s known for its opposition to the civil rights movement in the 1960s and continued opposition to globalization.

He said that former state lawmaker Russell Pearce, also a part of the group, encouraged Lettieri to run, citing his extensive financial experience

He said he expected competition from other candidates, and announced his run and had his campaign in full gear when Treasurer Yee pivoted from running for governor to running for a second term as treasurer.

He questions her performance.

Who else is running? These are the major candidates in the race for Arizona treasurer

Were he in charge of the Treasurer’s Office, he said he would not overlook investments in equities that pay dividends.

He said, for example, Arizona has prohibited investments in companies that boycott Israel, which resulted in the Treasurer’s Office divesting in Unilever, which owns the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brand.

The state had $143 million invested in the company.

Ben & Jerry's had announced that it would stop sales of ice cream in the West Bank and east Jerusalem by the end of 2022. The company has said its actions are not a boycott. Unilever recently announced it sold the piece of its business in the region to a local company that would sell the ice cream there under its Hebrew and Arabic name.

“It’s a $45 stock paying 1.95 in dividends, that is 4.4%. That is pretty hard to get anywhere,” Lettieri said, adding that he did not think the state should have divested from the stock.

At odds with party leadership

Lettieri got into a dustup with state Republican Party leadership last year when some people running for party leadership positions sought a recount in the election.

Prior to that, Lettieri said he had a good relationship with Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward. He used to go over financial reports with her when he was state party treasurer. However, he said at one point he was reviewing a report with her and suggested the party was spending faster than it was bringing in money.

“That’s when our relationship dissipated. For some reason or another she took that as an attack on her,” he said. “That’s it. That’s where it all fell apart.”

Lettieri ran against Ward for party chair last year.

Ward said their relationship was fine until he ran against her.

"I wasn’t aware that Bob and I had a 'falling out' until he started sending false information out when he decided to run for chairman in 2021," Ward said in an email to The Arizona Republic.

He said when he spoke with her in 2020, he was under the impression she would not run again.

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“I was progressing along nicely and when she late in the game, early January, she decided to run again, and from what the folks around the state were telling me, I could probably beat her, and then she got the endorsement from Trump,” he said, adding that the former president's endorsement cemented her win.

He said he was told he would be in the room when the votes were assembled. But then he was not allowed that access.

“The margins were so small,” he said. “I got suspect. I started to reach out and say, 'Let’s do an audit. Let’s prove it.' Then our relationship got even worse.”

The state party was sued over the issue, but the case was dismissed.

Lettieri said the split with party leadership has created an advantage for his opponents in the race.

Lettieri worked 15 shifts at the Senate’s review of the 2020 Maricopa County election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum last year, which concluded that Joe Biden won the county by even more votes than the official 2020 election results showed.

Lettieri served as an observer. Despite that, Lettieri said he “absolutely” is not convinced the election was fair.

When he was observing the election review, he said he saw a “disproportionate” number of ballots for Biden.

He said there were “75,000” overseas ballots. “It’s a disproportionate increase,” he said. “So I thought that had to be a fraudulent ballot just by reason of the growth in those overseas ballots.”

He said observers could see that those overseas ballots were predominantly for Biden.

He offered no evidence the ballots were fraudulent but his observations convince him of the potential for fraud.

When asked what voters need to know about him, he said regular citizens are not likely to delve into the details of financial reports from the state, and he will do that.

“You need somebody you can trust” in the office, he said.

On the campaign trail he said he hears often about public schools.

“It’s almost like a raging forest fire about public schools. It’s intense,” he said. “It’s getting away from the basics of education and leaning very heavily into indoctrination in things they don’t believe in. It’s a value conflict.”

Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona treasurer candidate primary 2022 candidate: Bob Lettieri