By Howard Fischer
Mail | Twitter: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — Concluding there’s probably no legal path to victory, Mark Finchem is dropping his bid to overturn the 2022 race for secretary of state.

In a brief filing, his attorney pointed out how appellate level courts have so far rejected claims by failed gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake that there were mistakes made in how the election was run and how counties tabulated the votes that should entitle her to be declared the winner over Katie Hobbs or, at the least, order a new election. And Daniel McCauley also noted that Republican Abe Hamadeh has so far failed to convince a trial judge that he should set aside the results showing he lost the race for attorney general to Democrat Kris Mayes.

Their allegations, McCauley told the appellate court, “more or less mirror Mr. Finchem’s.”

And there’s something else. While both Lake and Hamadeh continue their appeals, their margins of loss were far less than that of Finchem. The official results showed he trailed Democrat Adrian Fontes by more than 120,000 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast.

As a result McCauley said, Finchem “has decided to forego the appeal of his election contest dismissal.”

But McCauley told Capitol Media Services this may not be the end of Finchem’s chances of becoming secretary of state. And the key, he said, is the still-pending litigation by Lake.

She has raised a variety of legal issues, many of them relating to whether early ballots were included in the tabulation that should not have been counted.

That is based on claims — dismissed by a trial judge as baseless — that there is no way that election workers could perform the legally required signature verification given the time it actually took. Her attorneys cited data which they say more than 70,000 signatures were compared and verified in under two seconds each, with more than 276,000 signatures in less than three seconds.

“If Kari Lake winds up having several hundred thousand votes discounted, Finchem’s name or Fontes’ name will be on them as well,” McCauley said. “So it could well result in the reduction of totals across the election, not just for Kari Lake.”

What it comes down to, he said, is a court determining if a ballot is good or not good.

“And if a ballot is not good, then the entire ballot is not good,” McCauley said. “So we’re willing to wait and see.”

But even if Lake wins her claim and ballots are disqualified, McCauley did not explain how Finchem, with no active appeal pending, manages to get a court to rule that he and not Fontes was elected secretary of state.

Regardless, McCauley said Finchem is not dropping his appeal of the order by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian that he pay $40,565 in legal fees and costs to Fontes. Also still on appeal is a separate $7,434 penalty the judge imposed against McCauley for filing a lawsuit that she previously called “groundless and not brought in good faith.”

Finchem, a former state lawmaker from Oro Valley, filed paperwork last month to run for the Senate against incumbent Ken Bennett. Finchem listed an address in Prescott which would entitle him to seek a legislative seat from that area.