The Arizona Supreme Court today refused to stop a lower court from hearing new witnesses in the lawsuit that’s seeking to disqualify recall candidate Olivia Cortes.

Olivia Cortes’ lawyer today asked the Arizona Supreme Court to stop a hearing scheduled for Friday and to declare the case against the beleaguered recall candidate moot.

Ballots have already been printed for the Nov. 8 special election targeting Senate President Russell Pearce, and the lawsuit against Cortes is therefore moot, argued Anthony Tsontakis, who earlier successfully defended Cortes against a temporary restraining order seeking to kick her off the ballot.

It’s not because the lawsuit was politically motivated. Everyone knows how unapologetically brutal politics can be. And it’s not because the lawsuit was brought to defame Ms. Cortes, either. Placing your name on a ballot is the functional equivalent of sending the world an open invitation to attack your character.

Olivia Cortes’ revelation in court yesterday that she didn’t pay for the campaign signs that are plastered across the district or the professional circulators who gathered signatures on her behalf spawned more legal questions.

Jerry Lewis’ camp has finally launched an attack on Senate President Russell Pearce, initially firing off a letter that sarcastically welcomed Republican Olivia Cortes to the recall race.

The operative assumption of most observers of the Russell Pearce recall election has been that Pearce is the odds-on favorite to retain his seat. He hails from a heavily Mormon, conservative, Republican district and has, after all, regularly won elections handily.

While Cortes testified that she never lent her name as part of an effort to split anti-Pearce votes, paid signature gatherer Suzanne Dreher told the court her boss, Petition Pros owner Diane Burns, told her to tell people exactly that.

Republican Olivia Cortes is challenging one of the most powerful politicians in Arizona, but the political neophyte testified in court today that she doesn’t have full control over her campaign and doesn’t know who paid circulators to gather many of the signatures she needed to qualify for the ballot.

A lawsuit challenging a woman's candidacy in the Nov. 8 recall election of Senate President Russell Pearce may be in jeopardy because some ballots have been mailed to voters, an attorney said Monday.

The Arizona Supreme Court today quashed a challenge to the recall election targeting Senate President Russell Pearce, affirming a trial court’s earlier decision that the recall petitions are valid.