Supporters of Senate President Russell Pearce put Olivia Cortes on the recall ballot to pull Hispanic votes away from candidate Jerry Lewis and help Pearce, a Maricopa County judge has ruled.
But Judge Edward Burke said he could find no wrongdoing by Cortes herself, whom he described as a "political neophyte," and he refused to throw her off the Nov. 8 ballot. Burke heard arguments last week in the lawsuit filed by a Legislative District 18 Republican alleging that the Cortes campaign was a sham.
In Monday's ruling, Burke wrote that no one during the all-day hearing last week "impugned Cortes' honesty or integrity."
"The court finds that she is genuinely opposed to what she believes is Pearce's harsh legislative treatment of and comments about illegal Hispanic immigrants," Burke wrote.
Attorney Tom Ryan, who is representing plaintiff Mary Lou Boettcher in the case, asked Burke to order the county to print ballots without Cortes' name and give overseas voters extra time to return those ballots. Ballots already have been printed, more than 100 have been sent to voters overseas, and two voters in Paraguay have cast their votes.
County elections officials have said it would be costly and difficult to reprint and send out new ballots without Cortes' name on them in time to meet election deadlines. Burke declined to order new ballots.
"Two citizens have already voted. By the time new ballots could be printed and mailed to military and overseas voters, more may have voted," Burke wrote in his ruling. "The court cannot take the chance that any voter will be disenfranchised by its ruling."
Burke in his ruling did skewer East Valley Tea Party chairman Greg Western, a Pearce supporter who has been helping Cortes with her campaign.
"His testimony that he has no idea who designed, posted and paid for campaign signs supporting Cortes or who paid the professional circulators is too improbable to be believed," Burke said. "The court finds that Pearce supporters recruited Cortes, a political neophyte, to run in the recall election to siphon Hispanic votes from Lewis to advance Pearce's recall-election bid."
Burke said without the support of Pearce supporters, Cortes would have had no chance of qualifying as a candidate or running any sort of political campaign, but he reiterated that the court found no wrongdoing by Cortes herself. He said the courts should not, in most cases, be the final arbiter of the motives political candidates have for running for election.
"Divining candidates' motives and acting on them is more properly the role of the voters," Burke said. "Plaintiff's remedy is through the ballot box and not the courts."
He said the fact that many petition gatherers honestly told signers that signing Cortes' petition would help Pearce made it additionally difficult for him to find fraud.
Cortes, a 59-year-old Republican and naturalized citizen from Mexico, avoided the public for weeks. She took the stand in court to defend her campaign. She said she was not a sham candidate, she was not forced to run and she was not paid to run. Like Western, she said she did not know who paid for the signs with her name on them or the petition circulators who collected signatures to get her on the ballot.
"I wanted to offer my points of view as a naturalized citizen, a concerned citizen for the future of Arizona," Cortes said. "I'm running to win."
Western said Monday that he is glad the judge kept Cortes on the ballot.
"We look forward to campaigning," he said. "We're going to hopefully raise some money, get some fliers printed and go door to door passing those out."
He said Cortes still plans to participate in Thursday's candidate forum hosted by the Mesa Chamber of Commerce.
Western said that despite the judge's criticism, he stands by what he said in court that he does not know who paid for Cortes' signs or petition gatherers. He said his intentions for supporting Cortes are honest.
"I want to help her get her message out on immigration," he said.
Cortes' attorney, Anthony Tsontakis, said Burke's ruling upheld the First Amendment rights of both Cortes and of petition gatherers in Arizona.
