This article was originally published by Arizona Mirror on September 29, 2026. It is republished here under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Any views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Political Report or the Outsider Media Foundation. Title has been amended. Header image added by Independent Political Report. IPR encourages readers to support the author and publication by also visiting the original article.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit from two embattled Green Party candidates who sought to block the Citizens Clean Election Commission from ordering them to repay millions in public campaign funds they’re accused of fraudulently obtaining.
But the judge said they could refile their lawsuit if the Clean Elections Commission does do so in the future.
Judge Melissa Iyer Julian said in a Tuesday ruling that because the Clean Elections Commission hasn’t finished its investigation into Risa Lombardo and Duwayne Collier, much less ordered them to repay anything, it is not the right time for the court to intervene.
“Plaintiffs’ challenge is to the basis for a repayment order that has not and may never be issued,” Julian wrote. “That claim is not ripe for this Court’s review.”
Lombardo and Collier, the Green Party nominees for governor and secretary of state, sued the Citizens Clean Elections Commission earlier this month, saying it overstepped its legal authority for political reasons, in an attempt to derail their campaigns.
Lombardo, Collier and Republican Scott Neely, who lost his primary for governor to Andy Biggs, are all being investigated by the Clean Elections Commission and the Arizona attorney general for allegations that they falsified documentation for enough $5 contributions from voters to qualify for a collective $4.7 million in public campaign funds.
Like other Clean Elections candidates, Lombardo, Collier and Neely agreed to forgo large contributions and money from PACs in exchange for a fixed amount of public funding, based on the office they seek.
In August, the Arizona Mirror exclusively reported that six people who were listed in campaign finance records as having made $5 contributions to all three candidates were adamant they didn’t give any money to the candidates.
Both the Mirror and Tom Collins, executive director of the Clean Elections Commission, separately found that thousands of donors were listed as contributing $5 to all three campaigns on the same days. Many of them had never made a contribution to any other candidate, according to campaign finance reports.
Voters rarely make qualifying contributions to more than one Clean Elections candidate, but the Mirror’s analysis found that the three long-shot candidates reported collecting contributions from nearly 4,000 of the same voters — including more than 2,600 who were listed as giving to all three.
The Arizona Green Party has called Collier and Lombardo “sham” candidates and accused them of being Republicans in disguise, aimed at pulling progressive votes from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs to help Republican candidates Andy Biggs and Alex Kolodin.
Tim La Sota, the Republican election attorney representing the pair, told the court and the commission that the allegations against the candidates were just conspiracy theories.
Lombardo and Collier told the court that Collins and the Clean Elections Commission had intimidated them into stopping their campaigns via letters that Collins sent to both candidates on Aug. 25 informing them of the investigation into their campaign finances.
In those letters, Collins told the candidates that the commission might issue a repayment order after the investigation is completed and recommended that they stop spending the public funds.
The candidates argued that the secretary of state and county recorders were the only ones with the power to decide whether the candidates are entitled to public funding.
“Plaintiffs concede that the Commission may investigate their compliance with the (Citizens Clean Elections) Act,” Julian wrote. “They seek to prevent only a future repayment order based on the premise that the Secretary of State or county recorders improperly certified them. No such order exists. The Commission’s present conduct is an investigation within the authority Plaintiffs acknowledge the Commission possesses.”
The judge wrote that the court could not legally intervene in such a situation until the Clean Elections investigation is completed and any civil penalties are issued. And even then, the courts couldn’t take up the matter until an administrative hearing to challenge that decision was finished.
“The Commission may reject the anticipated recommendation, proceed on another ground, or take no enforcement action,” Julian wrote. “The administrative process therefore must be completed before Plaintiffs seek judicial review of any final Commission decision.”
The investigation is still underway, with an Oct. 29 deadline for completion.
La Sota told the judge on Sept. 25 that, at that point, days before the Nov. 3 election, the candidates’ campaigns would be effectively over, even if the investigation found no wrongdoing, doing “irreparable harm” to the candidates.
Julian found that argument unconvincing, writing that the approaching election did not create conditions that “permit the Court to resolve a dispute that remains contingent.”
In addition to the allegations of campaign finance fraud, the Clean Elections Commission is looking into the candidates’ possible violation of campaign finance reporting requirements.
In his letters to the candidates, Collins pointed out that they failed to disclose subcontractors they hired to do work for their campaigns, as is required by state law and Clean Elections rules. Lombardo and Collier both made large lump sum payments to Bootstrap Campaigns, a shadowy Nevada business created by California GOP political operatives weeks before Lombardo made her first payment to it.
Neither candidate disclosed payments to Uncle Sam Petitions or O’Neil Printing on their campaign finance reports, despite evidence that both businesses did work for their campaigns. Even though state law requires Clean Elections candidates to disclose all of their vendors, La Sota downplayed their failure to do so, saying it was inconsequential because Collins figured out who their subcontractors were on his own.
Together, Lombardo and Collier paid more than $1.2 million in public campaign funds to Bootstrap for a wide variety of services that even major, established firms would typically delegate to subcontractors. That makes it likely that the campaigns used other vendors that weren’t disclosed.
“The investigation concerns qualifying contributions, campaign expenditures, and reporting obligations,” Julian wrote. “The administrative process can develop the facts, determine whether any violation occurred, and permit the Commission to accept, reject, or narrow an asserted basis for enforcement before judicial review becomes necessary. Plaintiffs’ request for a declaration concerning the Commission’s authority does not permit them to bypass that process.”
Neither La Sota nor Collins responded to a request for comment.
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