A national group has spent about $90,000 on a Yuma County judge race. Here's who they are and what each candidate says.

The spending amounts in this story come from the group itself, as reported by the Yuma Sun, and from earlier KYMA reporting on state filings. Yuma Informed has not been able to open those filings directly. Claims each side makes about the other are labeled as claims.

Judge races usually sit at the bottom of the ballot, where a lot of voters see two unfamiliar names and either guess or skip.

The race for Yuma County Superior Court Division 5 has gotten harder to skip. A national political group has put roughly $90,000 into it.

The race

Two candidates are running to replace retiring Judge Roger Nelson:

• Jorge Lozano, a former Yuma County justice of the peace who says he's lived in the county for nearly 50 years.
• John LeSueur, an attorney who spent nearly a decade at the Arizona Corporation Commission, first as a policy adviser to a commissioner and later in its Utilities Division. KYMA has identified him as an assistant city attorney for the City of Yuma.

It's the only contested Superior Court race on Yuma County's ballot this year, according to the Yuma Sun. One thing that surprises people: in Yuma County, Superior Court judges still run with party labels. LeSueur won the Republican primary in July and Lozano won the Democratic primary, according to the Sun's primary results. That partisan backdrop is part of why outside money showing up here has drawn so much attention.

The money

The group is the State and Local Election Alliance. Its executive director, Geneva Fuentes, told the Sun it has spent more than $90,000 on digital ads and direct mail supporting Lozano and opposing LeSueur. She said that's about the group's whole budget for Yuma County this cycle, that she doesn't expect it to grow much, that digital ads are still running and that another mailer may go out.

That lines up with what KYMA reported Oct. 22 from state filings: $50,000 for a digital ad in an Oct. 15 filing and more than $37,000 for mailers in an Oct. 19 filing.

Fuentes told the Sun the group's mailing address is in Washington, D.C., but that she lives in Arizona and the group works with partners around the state.

Spending like this is legal. Independent groups can spend for or against a candidate as long as they report it and don't coordinate with the campaign.

Why the group says it got involved

Fuentes told the Sun the group endorsed Lozano for his experience, including his time as a Precinct 2 justice of the peace and a 2008 appointment as a Superior Court judge pro tempore, meaning a temporary judge.

Its case against LeSueur is about utility rates. Fuentes pointed to Arizona's average residential electricity rate, which she said rose from 9.66 cents to 11.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, about 22%, between 2007 and 2013, while LeSueur advised then-Commissioner Gary Pierce.

LeSueur's answer, per the Sun: he made recommendations but didn't set rates. He pointed to a 2010 Arizona Public Service rate increase that the commission approved 4-1, with Pierce as the lone no vote, which LeSueur said followed his advice. LeSueur also testified as a defense witness in Pierce's federal public corruption case. That case did not result in a conviction, which Fuentes also acknowledged.

What LeSueur says

LeSueur's core argument is about who gets to choose Yuma County's judges. He told KYMA that outside spending in a local judicial race is "unusual" and "unprecedented," and told the Sun that national money shouldn't shape local courts, citing the compromise Justice Sandra Day O'Connor helped broker that kept judicial elections in rural Arizona counties.

He also says the group is partisan. Citing campaign finance filings, he told the Sun the group has given more than $250,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party, more than $500,000 to Georgia's Democratic Party and more than $60,000 to Virginia's, and has received money from several progressive political committees. The Sun said it hadn't verified those figures. Neither have we.

Fuentes's response: the group backs Republicans too. She noted that LeSueur himself ran in this year's Republican primary.

LeSueur has also objected that the group's messaging makes Lozano look like an incumbent. He is not. KYMA reported that a mailer said Lozano had previously served as a Superior Court judge.

What Lozano says

Lozano told the Sun he's had no communication with the group and pointed out that candidates and independent groups can't legally coordinate. He said he learned the group was involved the same way everyone else did, from mailers and social media ads.

On the judge question, he told KYMA he spent eight years as a justice of the peace and, under a special Arizona Supreme Court order, would occasionally sit in Superior Court as a judge pro tem. Both things are true at once: he has heard cases in Superior Court, and he isn't the sitting judge in this seat.

The part worth sitting with

Here's my take, for what it's worth. Disclosure laws exist so voters can see who is paying to influence them, and in a race this small, $90,000 is a lot of influence. It's fair to want to know about it.

It's also fair to notice what hasn't been shown. Nothing public suggests the spending was coordinated with Lozano or broke any rule. And neither the group's criticism of LeSueur's commission years nor LeSueur's claims about the group's politics have been independently verified.

Both candidates have said the same thing in the end: do your homework. Election Day is Tuesday.

Sources

• Yuma Sun, National PAC spending draws attention in Yuma judicial race, Oct. 2026. Fuentes statements, spending total, rate claim, LeSueur and Lozano responses, partisanship claims.
• KYMA, Connor Emery, Yuma judicial race gains attention, Oct. 22, 2026. Filing dates and amounts, LeSueur and Lozano quotes, mailer description.
• Yuma Sun, Unofficial election results update. Division 5 primary results by party.
• Arizona Secretary of State, campaign finance portal. Official source for independent expenditure filings; documents did not load when checked.
• Featured image: Cbl62, Yuma County Court House, Yuma, AZ, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped. The cropped image is shared under the same license.