Arizona Republican Duwayne Collier filed as a Green Party secretary of state candidate, misrepresenting his affiliation to split the Democratic vote

Duwayne Collier, a registered Republican as of the 2024 general election according to Pinal County voter registration records, filed a statement of interest to run for Arizona secretary of state as a Green Party candidate on February 3, 2026. Collier worked as a paid petition circulator for Uncle Sam Petitions, a signature-gathering firm whose owner has donated nearly $4,500 to Republican campaigns and whose circulators registered for the 2026 cycle work almost exclusively for Republican candidates. Collier's own campaign later used the same firm to gather the signatures needed to appear on the Green Party primary ballot.

Collier's candidacy followed the same pattern the Arizona Green Party had already flagged in a separate gubernatorial candidate running the same election cycle: a registered Republican filing for public Green Party ballot access without any apparent connection to the party's platform or membership.

Updates

2025-12 — Arizona Green Party publicly warned Collier was a GOP-planted "sham" candidate [2]

The Arizona Green Party told its members it did not know Collier and that he had never been involved with the party, grouping him with a gubernatorial candidate it separately disavowed as an outside effort to hijack its ballot line and split votes away from Democrats.

2026-04-13 — Reporting tied Collier to paid GOP petition work [2, 3]

State Affairs Pro reported that Collier appeared to have worked as a paid petition circulator for Republican Corporation Commissioners Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers, according to campaign finance records. Phoenix New Times separately reported that Collier was registered as a paid circulator for Uncle Sam Petitions, the same GOP-aligned firm that gathered signatures for the disavowed Green Party gubernatorial candidate.

2026-07-27 — Reporting found Collier paid over $250,000 in public funds to the same undisclosed shell company [1]

The Arizona Mirror reported that Collier paid more than $250,000 of his $296,000 in public Clean Elections funding to Bootstrap Campaigns, a Nevada company with no online presence and no other reported campaign clients — the same firm the gubernatorial candidate in the same scheme paid more than $887,000. Combined, the two candidates routed more than $1.2 million in public funds to the company.