A recall campaign has formed against Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos.
The petition drive was filed on March 12, according to the Pima County Elections Department. In recent weeks, Nanos has come under fire for his handling of the Nancy Guthrie missing person investigation and for misrepresenting his checkered work history in his resume.
Daniel Butierez, a Republican running for Congress in Arizona’s 7th congressional district, started the recall campaign.
“It’s a big embarrassment to the community,” Butierez said of Nanos’ handling of the Guthrie case.
A successful recall campaign against Nanos would spark a new election for his position, which he could still run for.
“We’re aware of the recall, and it’s the right of the people. We’ll always honor the will of the people, and that’s what makes Democracy,” Nanos wrote to AZPM in a statement.
Butierez said the reporting on Nanos’ resume was what pushed him to kickstart the recall campaign.
Under Arizona law, Butierez needs to gather an amount of signatures equal to one-quarter of the total votes in Nanos’ last election — in this case, over 120,000 signatures. The law requires the signatures to be on paper and requires their collector to swear to their authenticity in front of a notary public.
Butierez said he had 600 signatures as of Wednesday and that enthusiasm was strong.
“I was sitting out in front of a store last Saturday, I had Democrats and Republicans coming over and signing that petition. I didn’t have one person saying, ‘No, I wouldn’t sign that petition,’” he said.
Butierez stressed that his campaign against Nanos, who is a Democrat, is not partisan. He praised Nanos for occupying his office in a nonpartisan fashion.
“You really couldn’t tell what side of the aisle he was on, which showed that he would be representing us all,” he said.
Butierez said volunteers have stepped up to help him collect signatures. One of those volunteers is Sergeant Aaron Cross, the president of the Pima County Deputy’s Organization, the sheriff’s department’s largest labor union representing deputies. Cross has sparred with Nanos in the past and stressed he is aiding the recall campaign in a personal capacity.
But in his union, Cross said deputies have been embarrassed by Nanos’ handling of the Guthrie investigation: reportedly blocking the FBI’s access to evidence, providing information later walked back by his office and inconsistently securing the crime scene.
“It’s totally undermined public trust in our department,” Cross said.
Cross said revelations about Nanos’ resume — which omitted disciplinary infractions for excessive force, the Arizona Republic reported — have frustrated his union’s members because of Nanos’ “heavy-handed” approach to discipline within the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
Cross said the recall campaign faces long odds and is “more of a barometer of the public’s frustration with the sheriff.”
Nanos was elected sheriff in 2020 and reelected in 2024 in an extremely narrow win over then-Commander Heather Lappin, who later sued Nanos for retaliation.
Note: this story was updated to clarify that the Pima County Deputy's Organization is the largest labor union representing deputies in the Pima County Sheriff's Department, not the largest union overall.
