Horne wins Republican AG race by 899 votes

Andrew Thomas (left) and Tom Horne continue to wait for a decisive count in the Republican attorney general primary. (Photos by Evan Wyloge and Josh Coddington/Arizona Capitol Times)

It took a few days longer than expected, but former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas conceded the Republican primary for attorney general to state Superintendent Tom Horne.

Horne won by 899 votes after all ballots were counted by 5 p.m. Aug. 31.

Thomas announced earlier in the day that he was conceding the race.

“It’s been an exciting race and even more exciting finish, but it’s clear that Tom Horne has won the Republican nomination. As I promised during the campaign, I hereby endorse him and wish him the best in the general election,” Thomas said in a press release.

Neither Horne nor Democratic candidate Felecia Rotellini waited for Thomas to concede before opening their campaigns against each other.

Horne, who declared victory the day before Thomas’ concession, called on Rotellini earlier in the day to return $4,176 in campaign contributions from a labor union that supported a boycott against Arizona.

And prior to Thomas’ concession, Rotellini challenged Horne to three debates on border security, senior citizen abuse and consumer and mortgage fraud. Both candidates are traditionally funded, so they are not required to participate in the Clean Elections debate mandated in most other statewide races.

Thomas said on Aug. 27 that he had intially planned to concede the race when he planned an announcement for later in the day, but decided not to after gaining ground on Horne. He said he would wait until all votes were counted on the Aug. 31 deadline.

As of Aug. 30, only about 900 ballots had yet to be counted in two counties, locking up the Republican nomination for Horne.

“We now look forward to the general election in November, where I am confident my message about securing the border, strengthening consumer protection and creating a positive legal climate for jobs will resonate once again,” Horne said in a press release.

Horne’s lead jumped from 433 to a high of 1,073 on Aug. 26, and dropped to 536 the following day. But Maricopa County, which had the bulk of the state’s uncounted early and provisional ballots going into the weekend, finished its count on Aug. 28, showing Horne with about a 900-vote lead.

The razor-thin margin between the two candidates seemed to personify the race as a whole, which most observers thought was too close to call. The race quickly became one of the ugliest in the state, as the two attacked each other relentlessly.

Conservative backlash to Thomas and the mountain of baggage that followed him throughout the GOP primary led many to speculate that Rotellini would get the support of disgruntled Republicans if he won his party’s nomination. But even with the more moderate Horne poised to win the Republican nomination, Rotellini said she believes she can still get enough crossover votes to win in November.

Many of the Republicans who voted for Horne did so primarily to keep Thomas from getting the nomination, Rotellini said, and will ultimately vote for her over the outgoing state schools chief.

“There is a groundswell of support for me in the Republican and independent camps,” said Rotellini, who won the Democratic nomination after a tight race with Rep. David Lujan. “I have had many Republicans tell me they were voting to keep Andy Thomas out but they’ll be voting to vote me in, in November.”

Horne constantly accused Thomas of using his office to launch politically motivated prosecutions against his enemies. Thomas, in turn, accused Horne of supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants and criticized him for a lifetime trading ban imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the early 1970s.

The vitriol between Horne and Thomas was on full display for the entire state during a televised Clean Elections debate in June, along with other joint appearances.

Thomas frequently repeated the mantra that Horne “has a plan for amnesty,” and repeatedly accused him of being a political and financial con artist. The week before the primary, Thomas’ campaign filed a complaint against Horne with the Arizona Corporation Commission and asked for an investigation into Horne’s failure to report a 1970 bankruptcy in several annual reports for his law firm.

Horne constantly invoked an ongoing federal grand jury investigation into Thomas, as well as the State Bar of Arizona probe, and urged voters not to pick a Republican nominee who might get indicted or disbarred before the general election.

As new information continued to come forward on the abuse-of-power allegations against Thomas, even some conservative Republicans spoke out against Thomas. One conservative blogger vowed to vote for the Democratic nominee if Thomas emerged from the primary.

But Horne and Thomas have taken conciliatory tones toward each other since the Aug. 24 primary, and both have vowed to uphold their promises to endorse each other if they lost.

“I have nothing but good things to say about him,” Horne said of Thomas, a drastic departure from the mudslinging that characterized the GOP primary.

Horne spent about $560,000 on the Republican primary to about $200,000 by the publicly funded Thomas. Thomas would have gotten more than $400,000 to counter Horne’s spending, but the U.S. Supreme Court in June blocked “matching funds” for Clean Elections candidates.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was the deciding factor, said Thomas’ spokesman Jason Rose. When the court’s decision came down, Rose said the campaign had a plan to win without matching funds. After the election, Rose said the closeness of the race, despite the financial disparity, was a testament to the strong campaign Thomas ran.

“Going into this battle with $189,000 statewide was walking into a war with a BB gun,” Rose said. “It’s still possible that we may come out the other side, and everyone feels very proud working with Andy and hustling and doing as much with as little as we had.”