Arizona Green Party candidate accused of being 'stealth MAGA'

A Green Party candidate for governor in Arizona appears to have many Republican financial supporters, observed The Phoenix New Times. A report this week found candidate Risa Lombardo had no real affiliation with the Green Party. She's required to be a Green Party member to run as one, but The New Times hasn't been able to find out when she signed up. "Instead, Lombardo may be a 'sham' or 'stealth MAGA' candidate who is in fact a member of a local independent conservative group," said the report. It's an observation that the Green Party noticed as well in December. “We do not know these candidates and they have never been involved in the AZGP,” the party wrote on X. The party also said that those working to gather signatures for Lombardo's candidacy were calling such candidates "independents. "There are just more than 5,000 registered Green Party members in the state, according to the Arizona Secretary of State," said the New Times. "But Green Party candidates can draw far more votes than that, albeit not enough to actually win many elections. Two years ago, Eduardo Quintana, the party’s ultimate candidate for the Senate, topped 75,000 votes. Sen. Ruben Gallego won that race by just more than 80,000 votes, and plenty of other recent contests have been much closer."The other curious candidates are fellow gubernatorial candidate Lisa Castillo, who failed to secure enough signatures to get on the ballot, and Secretary of State candidate Duwayne Collier.Well-known Green Party candidate William Pounds IV is also listed as a write-in candidate. There isn't much public information available about Lombardo, the report said. She's shown as being 65 and having lived in the state for 35 years. There's no campaign website and there are no campaign donations. There isn't even a photo provided in the Secretary of State's filing. The phone number listed on the campaign documents goes to an unanswered Google Voice number owned by someone else, the report said. In a statement of candidacy featured on the Secretary of State's website, Lombardo claims, “I am part of the Green party because my personal values resonate with its mission statement.” A longtime Green Party member, Gary Swing, called it “about as vague as it can be.”“It’s just a blanket silhouette of a person,” Swing told New Times. Arizona Green Party Secretary John Ralston refused to comment. The report explained that it isn't the first time someone has tried “hijacking the Green Party’s ballot line for their own purposes,” Swing added. He said that the goal is to “try to take votes away from the Democrats of those offices and help to elect Republicans by splitting the vote.”In 2024, candidates Mike Norton and Arturo Hernandez filed to run for the U.S. Senate. Party members hadn't heard of them either. They alleged that the man were "outside interests of meddling in the party’s primary elections for political gain," said the report.