Alma Hernandez will stay on the July primary election ballot — at least for the time being.
On Thursday afternoon, a Pima County judge denied an election challenge lodged by Hernandez’s opponent in the Democratic primary for a state senate seat in Tucson’s 20th legislative district. Rocque Perez’s lawsuit claimed Hernandez, who has served in the state house since 2019, is ineligible to run because she owes $20,355 in unpaid campaign finance penalties. A hearing in the case was held this week.
Arizona law bars election officials from approving candidacies by people who owe over $1,000 in “fines, penalties, late fees or administrative or civil judgments.”
But Pima County Judge Cynthia Kuhn relied on a 2018 Arizona Supreme Court case, Reyes v. Del Palacio, to conclude that Hernandez wasn’t technically “liable” for those penalties because they had not been enforced by any state agencies.
“Because the Attorney General has never issued Ms. Hernandez an appealable notice of penalty and has never imposed a penalty in connection with any of her candidate committees, she is not ‘liable’ for campaign finance penalties,” Kuhn wrote in her ruling.
The $20,355 in fines appear automatically on an online portal run by the Secretary of State’s Office. Kuhn wrote that the records “reflect outstanding fines that have not been paid” but don’t “reflect any administrative or civil order or judgement.”
Perez’s suit was consolidated with a similar one brought by Luz Espinoza Burruel, a resident of the legislative district. Perez said he won’t appeal Kuhn’s decision. But Burruel’s lawyer, Jim Barton, said he’s already started that process, hoping to change the Arizona Supreme Court precedent that led to Kuhn’s ruling.
The supreme court’s 2018 decision, Barton said, held it could not retroactively tell election officials they should have disqualified candidates based on unpaid fines under the Arizona law on registering campaigns if those penalties haven’t been enforced.
Barton argues that doesn’t mean a court can’t later disqualify a candidate for unpaid fines, enforced or not, under a separate Arizona law on election challenges like Burruel’s and Perez’s.
“We still believe that it’s wrong to take the standard from [the campaign law] and apply it to [the challenge law] and that’s what we’re going to tell the supreme court,” Barton said.
He said state legislators introduced the option of challenging candidates over unpaid fines in the 2010s, but that to his knowledge, it hasn’t been enforced since.
“I just think it’s important that that be exercised so that there is some teeth behind this,” Barton said. “I think otherwise you can just ignore the law and I don’t think that’s a good system.”
In a lengthy statement attributing the lawsuits to “dark money special interest groups” and calling Perez an “unserious opponent,” Hernandez celebrated Kuhn’s ruling.
“This was never about a real case. It was a desperate move by an opponent who knows he can’t win on the merits, so he tried to use a Trump/MAGA playbook: distract, deflect, and rig the field. It didn’t work. I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I’m doubling down. While others waste time and public resources on political games, I’ll keep doing what I’ve done for the past 8 years, delivering for my district and fighting for my constituents,” she wrote.
Responding to an AZPM question, Cesar N. Chavez with the Hernandez campaign said he could not confirm that “dark money special interest groups” were behind recent lawsuits, but said Barton has represented 501(c)(4) non-profits opposed to Hernandez in the past.
Perez, a former Tucson city council member who launched a progressive challenge against Hernandez in December, said he is disappointed she is “unable to follow the law.”
“Alma is boasting about being successful in her case without recognizing the fact that she has accumulated thousands of dollars in fines,” he said.
Perez and Hernandez will face off in the July 21 Democratic primary for the 20th legislative district’s sole state senate seat. As a heavily Democratic district centered on inner-city Tucson, the winner of the primary will likely win the general election.
Hernandez’s sister, Rep. Consuelo Hernandez, was also sued by a constituent represented by Barton but soon paid her $24,480 in outstanding fines, the Tucson Agenda reported.
