Highlights
- Lombardo received $1.1 million in public Clean Elections funds on May 26 and paid $887,000 of it to Bootstrap Campaigns, a Nevada LLC incorporated 13 days before her first payment.
- Bootstrap Campaigns has no website, no prior campaign finance history, and all officer positions are held by a Christopher Silva whose identity could not be confirmed.
- Her campaign also paid $50,000 to Gigs AZ, operated by an Arizona Republican Party staffer, and $3,000 to a firm run by a former AZGOP communications director.
- The Citizens Clean Elections Commission can decertify a candidate, suspend or claw back funding, or impose a penalty of up to $5,000 for statewide candidates who violate its rules.
Risa Lombardo, the Green Party candidate for Arizona governor whose own party has called her a fraud, spent 78% of her $1.1 million in public campaign money with a single Nevada company that was incorporated 13 days before she cut her first check to it, according to a report published Monday by the Arizona Mirror.
The Citizens Clean Elections Commission disbursed $1.1 million to Lombardo's campaign on May 26, after she collected more than $21,000 in $5 qualifying contributions. In June, her campaign paid more than $887,000 to Bootstrap Campaigns, a Nevada business whose incorporation date preceded her first payment by less than two weeks. The firm has no website, no online footprint, and no record of receiving payments from any other candidate in Arizona or federal campaign finance reports.
All officer positions at Bootstrap Campaigns are listed as held by a Christopher Silva. Attempts to identify Silva were unsuccessful, and the company has no web presence that would allow independent verification of its operations.
Lombardo's campaign finance report attributes the Bootstrap Campaigns payments to a broad list of services: consulting, mailers, text messages to voters, flyers, photography, video production, radio production, canvassing, social media management, petition gathering, and sign printing and installation. The Mirror notes that large campaign management firms with decades of experience rarely perform all of those tasks in-house, and instead typically hire subcontractors. Clean Elections rules require that a candidate's campaign finance report identify subcontractors paid through a vendor, with full names, street addresses, and the nature of goods or services rendered. Lombardo's report does not appear to meet that standard.
The petition-gathering line item draws particular scrutiny. Lombardo's nominating petitions were submitted in May, several weeks before she paid Bootstrap Campaigns for petition gathering and before the company was even incorporated.
Arizona law requires Clean Elections candidates to pay campaign funds directly to the person providing goods or services and to identify that person's full name, street address, and the nature of the work. If the commission finds a violation, it can decertify a candidate, suspend or order repayment of funding, or impose a penalty of up to $5,000 for candidates for statewide office.
Bootstrap Campaigns was not the only unusual vendor. Lombardo paid $30,000 to Hunt On Consulting, a Wyoming LLC that shares its registered address with hundreds of thousands of other businesses using commercial registered agents at that location. Wyoming does not require LLC owners to identify themselves on incorporation filings and collects no corporate or personal income taxes, making it, as the Mirror describes it, a haven for foreign shell companies and businesses seeking to obscure ownership.
Some of Lombardo's spending went directly to firms with documented Republican Party ties. She paid $50,000 to Tucson-based Gigs AZ, operated by Jose Acuna, who works for the Arizona Republican Party. The AZGOP paid Acuna $1,930 in June, according to a campaign finance report listing the same address for Acuna as the one in Lombardo's filing. She also paid $3,000 to Financial and Treasury Services LLC, created May 30, whose principal agent is Tim Sifert, a former communications director for the Arizona Republican Party. Sifert serves as treasurer for several Republican campaigns, including those of state Rep. Matt Gress and attorney general candidate Rodney Glassman.
When Lombardo faced legal challenges to her ballot signatures, she was represented by Republican election attorneys Tim La Sota and Kory Langhofer, whose past clients have included Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Arizona Republican Party. Her campaign paid La Sota $4,415 on June 24 for legal services. No payments to Langhofer or his firm, Statecraft, appear in her campaign finance report.
Lombardo was an elected Republican Precinct Committeewoman for Legislative District 2 from October 2024 until at least Feb. 28, 2025, and was selling MAGA merchandise and supporting far-right candidates including Kari Lake in 2023. She filed to run as a Green Party candidate shortly after leaving that post. Her husband, Michael Lombardo, remains a member of the executive board of the Legislative District 2 Republican Committee. When Michael Lombardo made a $104 donation to the Arizona Republican Party in May, he listed the same residential address in a north Phoenix mobile home park that Risa Lombardo uses for her campaign. Risa Lombardo told the Mirror in April the two had divorced, but the Mirror found no records confirming that.
The Arizona Green Party has publicly disavowed Lombardo's candidacy and is sending postcards to all registered Green Party voters in the state calling her a fraud candidate. The party is directing voters to write-in candidate Carlos Melendez for governor instead. Jon Ralston, the Arizona Green Party's recorder and its candidate for secretary of state, told the Mirror: "It demonstrates that she's a fraud, sham candidate. It's not the first time we've had to put up with it from Republicans or Democrats."
The tactic has precedent in Arizona. In 2010, a former Republican legislator recruited unhoused people and street performers to run as Green Party candidates, acknowledging those candidates might draw votes away from Democrats. With roughly 34% of Arizona voters registered as unaffiliated and Democrats relying on that bloc to win statewide, even a modest vote draw to a third-party candidate could affect the outcome of the governor's race between Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Republican nominee.
Why does this matter for the governor's race?
Green Party candidates typically appeal to left-of-center voters who are dissatisfied with the Democratic nominee. If Lombardo draws even a small share of those votes in a tight race between Hobbs and the Republican candidate, the margin shift could be decisive. The Arizona Green Party's own candidates are running as write-ins after failing to gather enough signatures for the ballot, leaving Lombardo as the only Green Party name printed on the July 21 primary.
The Citizens Clean Elections Commission has not announced any investigation or enforcement action as of the Mirror's publication Monday.
Where to find them
- Wyoming LLC · startinwyoming.com
Sources
Every factual claim in this article traces to one of the sources below. See how we work for the editorial process.
- azmirror.com retrieved 13/07/2026 20:05
- Wyoming LLC (official site) retrieved 13/07/2026 20:05
Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 13/07/2026 20:05. Every claim traces to a source.
