Two Gilbert council candidates clear legal challenges
Third will await hearing Friday on challenge to nominating petition
Courtesy Gilbert Chamber of Commerce
Gilbert Town Council candidates, from left, Kenny Buckland, Natalie DiBernardo and Noah Mundt have had some of the signatures on their nominating petitions challenged in an effort to disqualify them from the ballot. DiBernardo is running for mayor while Buckland and Mundt are running for open council member seats.
Correction: Private investigator Justin Yentes' finding was limited to forgery having occurred.
The cases to dismiss two Gilbert council candidates from the primary ballot were withdrawn Monday while a third was postponed until Friday.
Kenny Buckland, a candidate for an open council member seat, and mayoral candidate Natalie DiBernardo will appear on the ballot after the cases against them were withdrawn by Gilbert resident Michael Webb, a member of mayoral candidate Shane Krauser’s campaign team.
Meanwhile, Gilbert Planning Commission Chairperson Noah Mundt, a candidate for an open council member seat, had the trial challenging his candidacy postponed until Friday at a pretrial hearing. It originally had been scheduled for Tuesday morning.
Buckland appeared on a remote video conference for the hearing as he is overseas on an anniversary vacation. But the hearing lasted only long enough for Judge Scott McCoy to confirm with Webb, who was representing himself, that he was withdrawing his complaint.
Webb originally contended that the three candidates had failed to collect enough valid signatures, challenging enough to potentially knock each off the ballot. However, Maricopa County subsequently validated enough signatures for each to qualify.
Webb then amended his original complaint to allege that an 18-year-old high school student collecting signatures on behalf of an agency used by Buckland and Mundt had fraudulently collected some signatures through forgery.
Buckland, speaking to the Gilbert Independent after the hearing, said the issue was training and not fraud and that he had enough signatures to qualify regardless of knocking out those signatures newly in question.
However, he said he expects the opponents behind the challenge to continue to try to tag him with fraud in the campaign, noting the campaigns are well funded.
“It’s sad to me that the dirty games from our national politics have been brought into our community,” Buckland said.
Attorney Timothy La Sota, representing Webb in the DiBernardo case, withdrew the complaint before her hearing Monday.
Still, DiBernardo continued to accuse Krauser of playing dirty in an attempt to get her to drop off the ballot. She said that as a real estate agent, if she were convicted on any civil or criminal offense, she would have to report that to her licensing board, which would then determine whether she could keep her license.
“So this potentially could have affected my ability to put food on the table for my family,” she said. “And that's what they count on. They count on you dropping out because you're afraid. And for me, I'm like, this is just not acceptable.
“You don't get to make up facts and accuse people of things that aren't true, and I'm not afraid of that. The truth matters, and that's why we're just connecting the dots (on who is behind the complaint) and saying the truth matters.”
In his pretrial hearing before Judge John Hannah, Mundt, representing himself, objected to the amended motion being included in the complaint. He cited case law that he contended made it clear that the basis of the challenge to his signatures had to be done in the original complaint.
The delay from Tuesday to Friday on the trial allows additional time for Mundt to respond to the allegations set forth in the amended complaint.
Mundt, speaking to the Gilbert Independent after the hearing, pointed out that they are accusing a high school student who was out trying to earn some extra money by passing petitions for signatures and registering Republicans to vote.
“I think it's a real shame that what's happening and the tactics that they're using to accuse him of the fraud and forgery,” Mundt said.
He also challenged the finding of forgery as being done by Justin Yentes, a licensed private investigator who is the campaign treasurer for Aaron Accurso, one of Mundt’s opponents. He said Webb wants to throw out the law’s legislative intent based solely on Yentes’ finding.
“I'm just saying that it should be known to people that these are agents of an opponent's campaign that are doing this on purpose to try to get me removed from the ballot and going to the point of where they actually served this kid (a summons) at high school today,” Mundt said.
Yentes declined comment as he is to testify Friday. Attempts to reach Webb for comment were unsuccessful.
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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