The Cost of Truth: Stephen Richer on Standing Up for Democracy

When Stephen Richer, former Republican county recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, joined the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), it marked the latest step in a long journey of ups and downs.

Richer was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, but one by one, his family relocated to Arizona, a state that would come to define his career. First, his grandparents started a business there, then his sister followed. After attending Tulane University in Louisiana and meeting his now-wife in law school at the University of Chicago, the two decided to settle in Arizona as well.

All of this was before he became the only person at the Ash Center to be personally targeted by the President of the United States.

The Path to Politics

Before his time in office, Richer was a transactional lawyer. While he was always interested in politics, it took some time for him to decide to make a career out of it. “I’ve always been politically interested, politically involved. I care about the philosophy of politics, the ideas of politics. I worked at a think tank for a little bit in Washington, D.C., among other things. I’ve been involved in a number of campaigns. I volunteered for the 2008 presidential campaign, 2010 congressional campaign, 2012 presidential campaign, and when I moved back to Arizona, I was involved in Arizona politics,” he says.

That work ultimately encouraged him to transition from law to elected office.

“It was something I was interested in, something that was on the radar. This office I thought was a neat office because I have a management background, and it’s running an office of about 170 full-time employees, then it had a legal component because you are following state statute, you’re enacting state statute and, of course, politics — its inherently political.”

A Life-Changing First Term

Even before the presidential election, the spotlight was on Maricopa County, which is home to the state capital of Phoenix and ranks as the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the United States, with 2.6 million registered voters. In November 2020, Richer was elected as the county recorder. Literally overnight, he went from being locally known to being interviewed on outlets like 60 minutes and CNN. He was thrust into the national and international spotlight, either as a traitor or a national hero, depending on who you asked.

“The night of November 3, 2020, polls had closed, initial results had come out,” he reflects. “And Arizona had been called by Fox News for Joe Biden and that was a big stinkin’ deal because Arizona hadn’t gone to a Democrat nominee since 1996 with Bill Clinton’s reelection. So that was a surprise to many and upset many.”

As the Maricopa County recorder, Richer was responsible for running much of the county’s election process, including voter registration and mail-in voting. So, when there were widespread claims of a “rigged election,” he pushed back.

He figured the controversy would blow over pretty quickly. It didn’t.

When Richer reflects on his historic time in office as Maricopa County recorder, he recalls how his personal convictions, family, and friendships were tested when he denied President Donald Trump’s election fraud claims in” November 2020. The consequences were fast and severe.

“When President Trump calls you out by name, or tweets about you, or posts about you, if you’re not used to that world, you’re in for a rude awakening just because it’s hard to describe the loyalty and intensity of the following he has,” says Richer. “So as soon as that happens, lots of people find you on the internet, lots of people send you messages, send you voice messages if they can find your phone, lots of people feel like you betrayed the movement, betrayed them. But on the positive side, you find out who your true friends are.”

Personal and Political Consequences

That same night, dozens of people were in the parking lot outside his office, protesting. “[Far-right radio host] Alex Jones went down to the tabulation facility and started doing all types of stuff, getting in people’s faces, chanting. I knew it would be something because in the debates leading up to the election, President Trump had certainly been talking about the concept of election fraud. And [his supporters were] bashing mail-in ballot [boxes], which is something we were particularly attuned to in Arizona because almost everyone votes by mail,” he says. “So, it was on the radar but in terms of it becoming a bigger movement, it’s when those people were in the parking lot the evening of November 3^rd. I can’t remember whether they were chanting ‘stop the vote’ or ‘stop the count’ or ‘keep counting.’”

That chanting was the beginning of a political, personal, and media frenzy. Maricopa County makes up 60% of the state’s population, and at the time, it was the largest Republican County in the United States.

“It was the reliably red county, and it started shifting and becoming more purple,” Richer adds. That made it very important to the national vote. “It was surreal, surprising, because in politics, lots of people get fired up about lots of stuff and people speak in hyperbolic terms, but then when it manifests with something that’s so in your face, that took on another dimension. It was going to become something of a longer duration and much deeper intensity.”

It wasn’t just that people who didn’t know him were talking about his work as a politician — they were talking about his character, turning him into the bad guy in the eyes of so many.

“We are programmed as human beings to want to fit in … for the most part we want to be liked. And that’s doubly so for politicians because the whole business is getting a sufficient number of people to like you,” says Richer. “It led to many, many public outings where I was booed, and I would say if you haven’t gone to an auditorium full of say 500-plus people and been booed by all of them, then you are missing out on one of the more surreal life experiences. I think everyone should do that once, like an out-of-body feeling.”

At the same time, it wasn’t all naysayers, although their voices seemed to be the loudest. “Not a time [went] by where I would go out in Downtown Phoenix where someone wouldn’t come up to me and say, ‘hey, thank you, you’re a hero,’ or something like that. Tons of people, newfound respect within the Democratic party. The one that was an interesting dynamic for me was lots of elected and prominent Republicans who would privately say ‘thank you for doing this, it’s a courageous stance, we appreciate it, we know it’s all false,’ but then in public would have a different persona.”

It was a year of extremes, he says. Some of his friends stopped taking his calls, and at the same time, The Arizona Republic named him “Arizonan of the Year” for his willingness to speak the truth about the integrity of the state’s election processes. Later, in 2024, Time Magazine would award him the title of “Democracy Defender.”

“I’ve had people come up to me and push me, shove me. I had people try and break the windshield of my car,” he attests. What’s more, Richer lost people he considered friends.

“Even people who know me and had lunch with me, as soon as President Trump marked me as the bad guy, the enemy or the criminal, I was dead to those people,” he says. “President Trump’s declarations are hugely important to those people. There were a few that hurt; the vast majority of them, it was like, okay, I don’t know who you are, and you think I should be in jail for being a criminal? Which is inaccurate. [But] I can handle that. The ones that threaten violence are the ones we have to forward ahead to law enforcement. The ones that actually hurt though are the ones you thought you knew, you thought liked you.”

Richer had to work with the FBI, the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, as well as local law enforcement to deal with all the credible threats he received. At times, they even had to accompany him outside when new threats emerged.

Joining the Ash Center

Richer joined the Ash Center in early 2025, a new start after losing reelection in Maricopa County. He joins the team as the Reimagining Democracy program’s newest Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy. The program, led by Archon Fung, director of the Ash Center and Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at HKS, will see Richer engaging with HKS faculty, students, and other fellows through various events, workshops, and seminars focused on election administration. In addition, he will present his work to the larger HKS community.

“When I lost my reelection … obviously, I was bummed and everything about it, but then I would say a few days later, ‘I should try losing more frequently,’” he says. “Because the caliber of person that reached out to me and [showed] support, everyone from former President [George] Bush to [former Vice President Mike] Pence to Mitt Romney, it was really interesting. And nice.”

Moving Forward

Richer says he is permanently changed from the experience.

“You start to see something like what I lived through in the last four years, and you see how people do something they know is wrong, but you see the wide array of excuses they tell themselves,” he elaborates. “I’m not trying to suggest that lying about the 2020 election is something like the events I grew up reading about. But you can see how otherwise sensible, decent human beings by themselves would never sign up for those heinous things or this crazy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, but seeing some of those people get there gave me insight into seeing how normal, probably pretty okay people all of a sudden went along with some of the worst events in human history. It sort of shattered my world view.”

With all of that, would Richer change anything? Go back and do things differently? Like anyone else, he has a few regrets, including wishing he’d testified on the January 6^th Committee. He also might have taken a different approach with the Arizona Republican Party. But when it comes to the election claims, he doesn’t regret anything. “I don’t regret that I told the truth. I don’t regret that I stood up for the employees. I don’t regret that I ran. I don’t regret any of the hires I made.”

So, after the ups and downs, is he a hero or bad guy, a patriot or a “traitor”? Just like any other human being, it depends on who you ask. “I’ve been in auditoriums where I had standing ovations and auditoriums where I have been booed,” he says. “I would say the actual content or merit of me is somewhere in the middle.”