BREAKING: Mark Finchem DROPS His Election Contest Appeal; Still Appealing Sanctions, Though (SANCTIONS SCOREBOARD UPDATE)

If Adrian Fontes had been looking over his shoulder (SPOILER: he was not) he can stop. Mark Finchem has DROPPED his Election Contest appeal, and will not claim - in the courts, anyway - that he should be in the Arizona Secretary of State's Office.

Finchem is still pursuing his appeal of the $48,000 in sanctions assessed against him and his attorney, Dan McCauley. McCauley filed their Case Management Statement (below) yesterday, nearly two weeks after the July 19 deadline.

The Unopposed Motion to Dismiss the substantive appeal, filed yesterday, was a surprise. The notice of appeal was filed on December 21, but had sputtered since then. Finchem had received some assistance from the courts to keep it on the tracks, but had done nothing to move it forward. (After the second chance, McCauley told Arizona's Law in February that Finchem had decided to take advantage of the extra life and pursue the substantive appeal.)

In pulling the plug this week, Finchem cites the similar issues being raised by former running mates Kari Lake (for Governor) and Abe Hamadeh (for Attorney General) in their ongoing Election Contest appeals. "After a series of decisions in the Arizona appellate courts related to the 2022 statewide election, specifically Lake v. Hobbs and Hamadeh v. Hayes, whose allegations more or less mirror Mr. Finchem’s, Appellant has decided to forego the appeal of his election contest dismissal."*

Finchem and his attorney indicated that they will argue that the sanctions assessed against them for knowingly filing a "groundless" case ("...conscious decision to pursue the matter despite appreciating that the contest had no legal merit.") should be overturned because (1) the case was "not frivolous", (2) legal fees sanctions should not be appropriate in election contests, and (3) Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply in election contests. (The latter argument was one that particularly vexed Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian when McCauley continued to harp on it.)

ADDITION, 1:45pm: Finchem agreed to reimburse the Secretary of State's Office and Adrian Fontes (as Contestee) for the filing fees they paid to the Court of Appeals. Though only $280 total, that does represent a kind of sanction for appealing and then changing his mind.

* Although, in true Finchem Election Contest style, he gets that sentence wrong - he misnames the current AG as "Hayes", and incorrectly claims that there have been "decisions in the Arizona appellate courts" regarding Hamadeh's case. That has not yet made it to the appellate courts.