One Maricopa County Supervisor is speaking out against the rest of the board over their public campaign against the Recorder Justin Heap.
The board made multiple accusations against the recorder in a public statement following their vote to require the recorder to testify to them.
NEW: Statement on Today's Vote To Require Recorder's Sworn Public Testimony pic.twitter.com/ijubue2gkj
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) February 12, 2026
Supervisor Mark Stewart said in a Friday interview with James T. Harris on “The Conservative Circus” that the rest of the board’s behaviors against Heap were an “immature troll” that closed doors in critical ongoing negotiations over elections authority.
NEW🚨 Hear the Inside Story: Why the Recorder Fight is About Public Trust, Not Politics @JamesTHarris https://t.co/G340nBPIqn
— Mark Stewart Maricopa County Supervisor District 1 (@MarkStewart_AZ) February 13, 2026
Stewart accused board leadership of setting Heap up for an “unprofessional grill” without warning earlier this month. He commended Heap for how he handled the hard lines of questioning.
“Many of the questions and statements by the board members really had nothing to do with budget presentation,” said Stewart.
On Wednesday, Stewart voted with the rest of the board to order Heap in to deliver a report and sworn public testimony on the work of his office. Stewart told “The Conservative Circus” that his vote was strategic.
Per Stewart, the board has kept important conversations out of public reach in executive sessions, like discussions of the Shared Service Agreement (SSA) fight. Stewart said he supported rolling back the SSA to its 2023 version as early as last February, well before Heap ultimately sued the county amid souring negotiations.
“The fact is that Open Meeting Law tied my hands, and we seem to do everything in executive session and that keeps me quiet,” said Stewart. “So, the vote on Wednesday was strategy, it’s chess not checkers, James. Now both sides get to lay the means out on the table next Wednesday and the listeners and the voters and most importantly my neighbors get a chance to see what’s going on and see what makes sense. That’s how you get trust to come back, it’s not with insults it’s with sunshine.”
Stewart said Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee is controlling the board’s actions, with or without the agreement of other supervisors. Stewart said “more often than not” he suspected informal meetings have been occurring to coordinate board strategy where he’s “left in the dark.”
“She will not let me speak, she won’t speak to me outside of the county business, and I believe it’s because I keep asking questions instead of just going along,” said Stewart. “Who’s really making the decisions? In practice it’s her, the subcommittee, it’s the chiefs of staff, they move things forward sometimes without full support.”
This, Stewart said, was symptomatic of a problem that undermined public trust in his predecessor, Jack Sellers, along with the previous board as a whole: heavily filtering what goes on among board members for public consumption.
“The culture that he [Sellers] was a part of, the idea that everything should happen in secret, that the public doesn’t need to see what we’re doing and what we’re going over, that’s what I’m pushing to undo, to bring transparency and to let the public in,” said Stewart.
The board and the recorder have been duking it out in court since last summer. The latest development in the case from last week saw the court awarding the recorder a temporary restraining order against the board. The board attempted to subpoena Heap’s staff days after they testified in the case.
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