Congressman David Schweikert (R-CD1) has succeeded in getting a Maricopa County judge to step down from a lawsuit filed against the longtime politician and others involved in his 2022 primary campaign.
But Judge John R. Hannah, Jr. did not depart the case without first taking a swipe at the defendants and their attorney, Timothy La Sota, for seeking to have the longtime judge removed for not disclosing a small donation to one of Schweikert’s Democratic opponents a few years ago.
“The fact that one of the contributions happens to have been made to a one-time political opponent of Congressman Schweikert does not make this case different,” Hannah wrote in his recusal order. “The amount of the contribution was $50, de minimis in this context. The contribution was made more than three years and two election cycles ago, in September 2019.”
Schweikert has served in the U.S. House Of Representatives since 2010. In 2022, he prevailed in a three-way primary against businessmen Elijah Norton and Josh Barnett before narrowly defeating Jevin Hodge, a Democrat.
Three lawsuits have been filed against Schweikert in connection with his 2022 campaign. One was initiated by Leslie Hammon, a private citizen pulled into Schweikert’s primary campaign when an image taken in 2018 of Hammon and Norton was included in some of Schweikert’s street signs and mailers without Hammon’s permission.
The content of the ads suggested a romantic or sexual relationship between the two men, something they both denied. Even though Hammon’s face was somewhat obscured in the ads, friends and business associates knew it was him.
Hammon requested his image be deleted from what he described as the “homophobic” campaign material, but the ads continued.
In July 2022, Hammon sued Schweikert as well as the congressman’s wife Joyce: his campaign committee, Friends of David Schweikert; and Americans for
Accountability in Leadership. The case was assigned to Hannah, who has been on the Maricopa County Superior Court bench since 2005.
On April 5, the parties participated in a status conference with Hannah. During the hearing, the judge ordered Schweikert and the other defendants to turn over various documents and records to Hammon within 30 days.
Hannah also heard arguments on a defense motion for judgment on the pleadings, which if granted would dismiss Hammon’s lawsuit. Hannah did not rule on the motion during the hearing. Instead, he took the matter under advisement which gave the judge 60 days to issue a ruling.
The next day, La Sota filed a motion to disqualify Hannah from further involvement in the case. The motion, La Sota wrote, was “based on newly discovered information that indicates a political preference on the part of Judge Hannah that Defendant Congressman David Schweikert cease to be a member of Congress.”
La Sota’s information included records of political donations Hannah made in 2019 and 2020, including $50 the judge contributed to Hiral Tipirneni in 2019 when she was seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. House in CD6. Tipirneni went on to lose to Schweikert in the November 2020 General Election.
Hannah had also made a $100 donation in 2020 to a political action committee (PAC) called Movement Voter that was formed to “help Democrats win in Arizona.” Several other campaign donations were made by Hannah to Democratic candidates nationwide, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential run.
Most of Hannah’s donations ranged from $5 to $100, according to public records.
La Sota’s April 6 disqualification motion notes he received the information about Hannah’s political activities the same day the judge ruled against Schweikert and the other defendants in the dispute about documents.
Legal observers say there is ample case law demonstrating that small donations to support political or civics interests do not automatically disqualify a judicial officer from presiding over a case. But La Sota argued Hannah’s lack of disclosure about his past support of a Schweikert opponent and of anti-Republican causes made it imperative to reassign the case to a different judge.
“Any circumstances that objectively lead to the conclusion that the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned calls for disqualification,” La Sota wrote in the motion. “Even when there is no actual bias, justice must appear fair.”
Judge Timothy Thomason advised the parties he would issue a ruling or set a hearing on the disqualification motion sometime on or after April 24. But Hannah made Thomason’s order moot by recusing himself April 19.
Hannah did not leave the case quietly.
“The Arizona Code of Judicial Conduct treats small political contributions as permissible civic participation, like voting,” Hanna wrote in his recusal order. He also noted that public records of his various past contributions “has been circulating in the Maricopa County legal community for over a year.”
Hannah added that several litigants in other cases have unsuccessfully argued his contributions were grounds for disqualification. One such case involved the Arizona Republican Party, which argued in 2020 that Hannah could not “be fair” presiding over a lawsuit against then-Maricopa County Attorney Adrian Fontes, a Democrat.
The Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct confirmed no violation of judicial ethics was found in that case, Hannah revealed in his recusal order.
Hannah acknowledged he “is acutely aware of the political and social conflicts that divide our community” and the perspective of those “who have come to mistrust key community institutions, including the courts.”
Whether those views are right or wrong, Hannah noted “the loss of confidence among any substantial number of our citizens, for any reason, undercuts the function of the judiciary and the ability of individual judges – including this one – to do their jobs well.”
Hannah then recused himself from Hammon’s lawsuit, “even though this Court is confident that the adjudication of this case has been and would continue to be ethically sound in all respects.”
A new judge has not been assigned as of press time.
Hannah’s recusal does not impact the other two lawsuits involving Schweikert’s campaign activities. One of those cases was also filed in July 2022 by CarGuard, a vehicle warranty company based in Scottsdale for whom Norton previously worked.
Judge John Rea of the Maricopa County Superior Court is presiding over the CarGuard lawsuit. He has scheduled a July 6 pretrial conference.
Rea is also presiding over a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Norton and his campaign. The defendants filed a stipulated motion last week to extend their deadline to file a responsive pleading..
La Sota is representing the defendants in all three cases, while Hammon is represented by Brett W. Johnson, Ian R. Joyce, and Colin P. Ahler. Norton and his Norton for Congress committee are represented by Wilenchik & Bartness, while CarGuard’s attorney is Douglas Allsworth.