An ASU sophomore’s surprise election win puts a spotlight on an obscure office

The Maricopa County Superior Court is the fourth-largest trial court in the country. Its affiliated Clerk of the Court office processes 31,000 pieces of paper per day, including many of the most important documents in people’s lives. It has an annual budget of $65 million and nearly 700 employees at 10 locations.

And Maricopa County voters just elected a 19-year-old college sophomore to run it. 

Choose your cliché: a Cinderella story, a convergence of the stars, a perfect storm. An ambitious young man, interested in politics, looking for something — anything — to run for, and an electorate sick of Republicans who saw two names they didn’t recognize on the ballot and filled in the circle next to the one identified as Democrat. 

By all accounts, Sebastian “Seb” Matta is a bright and personable young man. He graduated from Thunderbird High School in Phoenix, where he was on the debate team. He is studying the philosophy of law at Arizona State University. He lives with his parents, and on national late-night TV, he disclosed that his recent work duties have been skimming the pool and taking out the trash at home. But with his new salary of $96,600, he can probably pay someone to do those for him, he told the show host.

So far, the media attention has focused on the improbability of Matta’s win and his story has been portrayed uncritically by the media, both local and national. 

Republicans aren’t commenting. Neither are his predecessors in the office. Democrats express hope.

“I want him to be successful,” Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo said, “no different from anyone else elected to office.”

But given the size of the budget, the workforce, the infrastructure and the contents of its databases, one wonders why Clerk of the Court is even an elected position instead of an appointed one, like the county manager, hired after vetting experience and credentials.

“Should it be an elected position?” Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, wondered. “There are quite a few offices you could make that argument for.”

In fact, it has been asked about mine inspectors, sheriffs, even judges. So why is the clerk of the court elected instead of appointed?

The simple answer is that the Arizona Constitution says so. In territorial times, federally appointed district judges rode circuits around the territory, but the clerk was the locally elected official who ran the court. That dichotomy was carried over into statehood, and not just in Arizona.

According to the National Center for State Courts, clerks for “general jurisdiction” courts, like the one in Maricopa County, are elected in 26 U.S. states and appointed or hired in 18, with six states where the selection varies from county to county, mostly leaning toward election.

In theory, it continues to give control to the people instead of to the establishment, for better and for worse.

“Mr. Matta was duly elected by the citizens of Maricopa County,” Gallardo said.

Most people contacted for this story did not want to comment on the record.

“He’ll do fine,” several knowing court denizens told me. 

“Well, if he hires the right people…,” a retired judge said, his words trailing off.

“Everybody’s just in shock,” a rank-and-file employee of the Clerk’s Office told me. “But it’s a well-oiled machine. It runs itself.” 

So, maybe it’s less like handing the keys of the Mercedes to your kid and more like putting him in a Waymo, giving him a credit card and letting him go where he will.

Indeed, among elected officials as a whole, in Arizona and elsewhere, there have always been naifs and naturals, divas and dumbasses of every age, color and political persuasion. 

As noted, Seb Matta is a smart young man, and perhaps the smartest thing he has done was to find a good mentor. 

Inside the county’s ‘legal memory’

The office of the Clerk of the Superior Court is the county’s legal memory. Lawsuits are filed and chronicled there, and so are criminal, probate and family court matters. There is a clerk employee in each courtroom to ensure that all court proceedings are recorded and filed: court minutes, dockets, writs, warrants, subpoenas, summonses. 

The office processes passports and issues marriage licenses, memorializes wills and verdicts and divorces, manages child support and spousal maintenance, and processes about $500,000 in fines and fees and restitution payments each day. And it stores all of that information electronically — 84 million images — so that attorneys, journalists, investigators and regular citizens can access it.

According to its website, it handles more than 143,000 court cases, 30,000 passports and 26,000 marriage licenses in a year.

“It touches the lives of thousands of individuals,” said Jeff Fine, the last elected Clerk of the Superior Court.

Fine, a Republican, was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. He had spent a career as a Justice of the Peace and rose to administrator of the county justice court system before running for clerk. But he resigned in 2025, before his second term ran out, to take a position at the Arizona Supreme Court. Another clerk was appointed to replace him, but also stepped down. At present, Chief Deputy Clerk Nancy Rodriguez has been running the office and will do so until Matta is sworn in. 

Fine declined to comment about Matta’s election.

“Ordinarily, you see someone come up through the ranks before they are elected,” said Aaron Nash, who spent 16 years at the Clerk’s Office before being appointed, not elected, Clerk of the Arizona Supreme Court. Nash, an attorney, served the Superior Court Clerk as legal counsel and public information officer.

But this was no ordinary election. Jeff Dial, Matta’s Republican opponent, it should be mentioned, has no apparent court-related experience, either. He is a 50-year-old owner of a business who spent six years in the Arizona state legislature more than a decade ago. But his work history includes significant experience “overseeing operations and quality control and managing personnel, marketing, technology and communications,” according to his campaign website.

Matta has repeatedly told reporters that he is “not an ordinary 19-year old,” because, after all, he got the signatures he needed to get on the ballot and raised $20,000 to run his campaign.

He got a nearly 500-percent return on that investment.

‘Why not?’: how Matta got here

Why did Seb Matta run for Clerk of the Superior Court?

“I saw that nobody on the Democratic side had submitted themselves to this office in nearly a decade,” he told The Arizona Republic. “And I figured, you know, why not?”

His father is an investigator at a law firm, and young Seb occasionally went with him to the Clerk’s Office when he had business there.

“I always thought the job was really cool,” he told the Arizona Capitol Times, “and I like that it’s an intermediary between you and the courts.”

On Ballotpedia, he is described as a first-generation Argentine-American who wants to provide more language access to the public, raise awareness of the office, and expand online systems.

Dial, his opponent, noted in his campaign materials that Matta had trouble filing his campaign finance information on time.

“It’s just that it’s tough to manage everything at once, and I’m not a math whiz,” Matta told Capitol Times.

When he won last week, the interview requests poured in and Matta made himself available: Reuters, The New York Times, The Fresno Bee, all the local Phoenix TV stations. He told the Arizona Mirror in a brief phone conversation that he would call back to be interviewed “in a bit” but did not respond to a follow-up call and email. 

He appeared remotely on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” and Kimmel referred to him as “Boss Baby comes to life.”

“I came into this not expecting to win,” Matta said. “I saw a big chance to make a change in my community.

Then, Matta slipped into sophomoric mode.

“I’m a full-time student with a side gig of running for office,” he told “Mr. Kimmel.”

He said, as he had done in other interviews, that he intended to continue his schooling while holding office. 

And when Kimmel hinted at how attractive his new salary would make him, Matta slyly said, “Oh yeah, don’t you worry, all the girls at ASU are lining up.”

An unexpected mentor emerges

“Frankly, I think it’s refreshing,” said Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state. “It’s a kick in the pants to one of the biggest courts in the country.”

Fontes started to reminisce about another political newbie elected to county office some years ago in hostile, Republican-establishment territory. He was talking about himself, the ex-Marine and tough, high-profile criminal attorney, though his ascent to elected office is hardly the same as a college sophomore’s. He has proven to be an astute politician and a national spokesman for Arizona.

Then came the reveal.

“We’ve been talking the whole time,” Fontes said, meaning he and Matta. “He’s been asking me a lot of smart questions. He knows there’s more to this than meets the eye, and I’m happy to help.”

So, Fontes is helping Matta build a transition team, recommending lawyers and candidates for chief of staff.

“We’re going to be fine, because he’s a smart enough kid to reach out,” he said.

Then Fontes got philosophical.

“The beauty of the American experiment is that you can knock a beaker off the table, clean up the glass, and go on with the experiment,” he said.

“What can I do to help this young man reach his potential? This kid may end up being the best clerk of the court the nation has ever seen.”