Arizona secretary of state candidate Michelle Ugenti-Rita points to her impact on elections

She always wanted to run for public office. But when Michelle Ugenti-Rita won a seat in the Arizona Legislature, the job wasn't what the former high school student council member expected.

The horse trading and deal cutting dismayed her as she waded into her first year as a Republican state representative from Scottsdale.

“You kind of quickly find out it’s often times not merit-based," she said of the way policy is made.

That lesson helped steel her resolve to rebuff pressure to go along just to get along.

That determination was tested after she was booed off the stage last summer at a Trump rally in Phoenix hosted by Turning Point USA.

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A candidate for Arizona secretary of state, Ugenti-Rita had barely started to speak about two successful election bills she had sponsored when the boos started. She cut her talk short and walked off the stage, telling the audience she would win the race.

"I wouldn’t change it for the world," she said nearly a year after the event. She's still perplexed by the audience's negative reaction, saying she's since talked to attendees who can't articulate why they booed. In hindsight, she thinks some of the booing came from people who were trying to knock her down, knowing her record on election legislation.

Today, she calls that moment a gift.

“I thought, 'Oh yeah, I’ve arrived.'”

Pink ribbons — and a stiff arm

An Arizona native, Ugenti-Rita, 42, attended Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale and earned a degree in business administration from Arizona State University.

At ASU, she signed up for a club rugby team, knowing nothing about the sport, but quickly took to the game, playing wing and developing a reputation for her stiff arm. She made a point to wear ribbons — pink, her favorite color — in her hair.

"I liked the juxtaposition of being girly and playing a rough and tumble sport," she said.

She worked in commercial real estate, but let her license lapse in 2020, state records show. By then, legislative work had taken priority.

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Make a case and defend it

A legislative veteran with 12 years of experience, Ugenti-Rita established a reputation as a sharp-tongued maverick within the Legislature's GOP caucus, ready to charge into debates and stake out contrary positions, even on issues Republican leadership was pushing.

She called teachers "educational terrorists" when arguing against raising the spending cap on K-12 spending; she voted against a bill that would have required video cameras on ballot drop boxes because, she said, drop boxes should be banned, not monitored.

Last year, she defied Gov. Doug Ducey's plan to award sports betting licenses to sports teams, calling it a giveaway to deep-pocketed sports owners when the state should have retained more of the revenue for its coffers. That prompted a "very inappropriate letter" from Randy Kendrick, wife of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick, she said.

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Ugenti-Rita said people misread her, thinking she's tough — which she says she is — when what she's really asking is for people to make their case and defend it.

"I also care very much about being consistent and doing what I say," she said. If that means she sometimes stands alone, she added, so be it.

She was at the center of one of the Legislature's darker chapters, when she accused then-state Rep. Don Shooter in 2017 of sexual harassment. An investigation turned up similar allegations from other women and led to Shooter's expulsion.

A resulting legal fight in which Ugenti-Rita and Shooter exchanged defamation and slander suits led to the disclosure of a female lobbyist's deposition that Ugenti-Rita had harassed her in 2016, including making sexual overtures. The lawmaker declined to comment on the lobbyist's deposition, which Shooter had subpoenaed.

Her 2018 defamation lawsuit against Shooter is scheduled for trial in June 2023.

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Changing election procedures

As she runs for secretary of state, Ugenti-Rita points to her substantial imprint on Arizona elections.

In 2016, she successfully ran a bill that banned the mass collection of ballots. The so-called "ballot harvesting" law was challenged all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices upheld the ban.

Last year, in the charged aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, she authored the two election-focused bills that actually became law.

One created an election-night deadline for voters to verify their signatures on mail-in ballots if elections officials have a question  The second bill eliminated the Permanent Early Voting List, in which voters are mailed a ballot every election. Instead, her legislation converted the list to one for active voters only, purging voters who don't vote at least once in four years.

This year, Ugenti-Rita drew bipartisan support for a bill that lowered the threshold for triggering an automatic recount. It was a reaction to President Joe Biden's narrow win in Arizona. If Senate Bill 1008 was in effect in 2020, the state would have had a recount.

Ugenti-Rita acknowledged Biden's victory nine days after it was declared, she said. But the fixation on which candidates back Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election is mostly a media preoccupation, she added.

“It’s not relevant to my campaign," she said, adding voters don't ask about the "Stop the Steal" movement.

While she supported the creation of the state Senate's ballot review, or audit, of Maricopa County's 2020 election, she criticized its execution as "botched." She also criticized the audit's rising price tag. It has climbed to over $1 million, despite assurances it would only cost $150,000 from the Senate's budget.

A deliberate method bears fruit

On the campaign trail, she plays up her successful record on election laws.

She disdains what she calls "election bills in name only" that get introduced mostly to make a splash, but don't advance. Her record shows she understands the deliberative and cautious process that creates legislation that can get signed into law and withstand court challenges.

Voting, she said, is simple. But elections are complicated.

"Because I've dealt with this issue for so long, I'm acutely aware of how complex it is," she said, adding that's why she should be the next secretary of state.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona secretary of state primary candidate: Michelle Ugenti-Rita