Horne administration... part two
An updated list of staff under Superintendent Tom Horne
Last month I wrote about who was on Tom Horne’s staff at the Arizona Department of Education, but between then and now, Horne hired some interesting people onto his staff so I thought it would be worthy to write an update here.
While most of his primary staff I wrote about were previous staffers under his time in office a decade ago, the most prominent name of new staffers is none other than former lawmaker and 2022 failed LD4 House candidate Maria Syms.
Syms joined Horne’s staff officially as his Associate Superintendent of Legal Services, but according to her, she’s his general counsel. Only, the ADE does not get a general counsel since they are represented by the Attorney General’s Office in legal matters involving the agency.
What’s interesting about Syms taking on that role is that she (and her husband Mark) apparently still not has not paid legal fees in a court battle spanning years.
Quick recap: Syms ran to keep her 2018 legislative seat in LD28 (she lost) and in that race her husband ran as an independent to challenge former Sen. Kate Brophy McGee because she’s a moderate and Syms is a fringe Republican. Mark Syms’ campaign forged signatures on his petition sheets, Brophy McGee’s husband sued to get him thrown off the ballot, succeeded (during all of this former Gov. Doug Ducey rescinded his endorsement of Maria Syms due to his ties to Brophy McGee and keeping Senate control) and the Symses were ordered to pay $50,000 in legal fees. (They then sued former AZGOP chair Jonathan Lines for defamation for him bending the truth about their case during an LD meeting on his re-election campaign to remain as chair in 2019 when he lost to Kelli Ward. The Symses supported Ward.)
Multiple Republican sources tell me this many years later Syms still has not paid those legal fees.
Syms just lost her 2022 election to Matt Gress and Laura Terech and now she’s cashing in on more than 5x what her legislative salary would have been from taxpayers earning $104,500 for a job she inflates on her LinkedIn.
The other main interesting hire of Horne’s is Jennie Paperman Heideman, a supposed early supporter of former Superintendent Kathy Hoffman’s, who attempted to run for SPI in 2022 but didn’t submit signatures. She would have run against Horne in the primary, also joining her now-colleague Michelle Udall in the field.
Her role is for a modest position as Title I Specialist earning $70,000. One education source remarked that that was a “weird job for a political favor.” Paperman serves on the Deer Valley School District Governing Board and was a teacher for over 18 years… so earning $70,000 might actually be a step up salary-wise for her given teachers in Arizona are severely underpaid.
If you know some fun anecdotes about any of Horne’s other staff, please let me know! These people are earning taxpayer dollars for a scandal-plagued politician so we have a right to know who are occupying these roles.