Matt Gress Calls Threats Against Tammy Caputi "Disgusting," Says He Has Taken Homophobic Slurs Himself

Rep. Matt Gress, the Phoenix Republican defending his Legislative District 4 House seat, called the death threats sent to Democratic challenger Tammy Caputi and her family "disgusting and completely unacceptable" in written answers to The Arizona Inquirer on Friday.

"No candidate or family should ever face hatred or threats for participating in public life," Gress wrote.

Asked whether his own campaign has been threatened this cycle, Gress, who is openly gay, said it has not, but that hate has found him too. "I've received some ugly homophobic slurs and comments, but nothing I can't handle," he wrote. "I don't equate that with threats against someone's safety however; the larger point is that hatred and threats have no place in our politics, no matter who they target."

So in the same race, in the same fall, a Jewish Democrat was told "you dumb Jew" in a message threatening her family's lives, and a gay Republican has been fielding slurs about who he is. On that much, at least, the two sides of LD4 now agree.

Scottsdale Police are investigating two threatening messages sent through Caputi's campaign website. The department learned of one over the weekend and the other on Wednesday. Caputi says the FBI is involved as well. No one has been arrested, and no one has publicly claimed the messages.

One message, as the campaign released it, read: "If you keep running for office, I will come to your house and you will regret it. Watch your back." The other threatened to kill Caputi and her "entire family bloodline" and ended with an antisemitic slur.

Caputi, a former Scottsdale councilwoman and a Temple Chai member for nearly 25 years, has stopped canvassing doors without other volunteers along. Her campaign called on officials across party lines to condemn the threats.

Gress is the first of her Republican opponents to do so on the record with the Inquirer.

Gress's condemnation came with a rebuttal.

Caputi has blamed the climate around the race on what she calls false claims by her opponents about her record, her positions and her family. She has not said the threats came from anyone in the race.

Gress says he isn't the one running negative ads. "The only candidates running attack ads in this House race are Ms. Caputi and Ms. Gresham," he wrote. "I haven't run a single negative ad against my opponents, so I'm not sure what she's talking about. Our campaign has focused on my record, results, and the bipartisan work we've accomplished over the last four years."

He turned the civility argument back on Caputi and her running mate, Karen Gresham. "All of us should be mindful of our rhetoric," he wrote. "Ms. Caputi and her running mate have made misleading and false claims about me, including that I want to throw teachers in prison for teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. Pretty ridiculous stuff. That kind of rhetoric doesn't contribute to the more civil politics our community deserves."

"We can disagree strongly without demonizing one another, and that's how I've tried to run my campaign."

The Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee's LD4 page lists "Top Hits on Carter and Gress," casting Gress as an out-of-state lobbyist who wrote $1.5 billion in special tax breaks for donors. Gresham has publicly criticized Gress for working as a lobbyist for the anti-union group Americans for Fair Treatment while sponsoring anti-union bills at the Capitol.

The Inquirer has not found a paid Gress ad attacking Caputi or Gresham. But Gress has gone after Caputi in the press. He told KJZZ on Oct. 8 that people running for office "should live in the district they seek to represent. Period," and that "wealthy donors" were letting Caputi use their address "when she doesn't really live there or anywhere in the district."

Caputi answered that Gress and her Republican opponents had turned "a deeply personal family matter into an opportunity for political attacks." The Arizona Republican Party has since asked the Maricopa County Attorney to investigate her residency. That office has not announced any action, and Arizona courts have historically declined to remove candidates over residency disputes.

No negative ads from Gress, then. Negative words, yes.

The Mockingbird line traces to the Democratic caucus, whose LD4 page says Gress and Carter "voted to make it a felony for teachers to teach classic literature." The Inquirer has not found a Caputi or Gresham ad that names the book.

The vote is real. On April 3, 2024, Gress voted yes on SB 1007, Sen. Jake Hoffman's bill making it a class 5 felony for a public school or library employee to refer a minor to "sexually explicit material." It passed the House 31-21. Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed it in June 2024, calling it an attack on public schools and libraries.

What matters is how Arizona defines that term, because it isn't how the law usually defines it.

In Arizona's criminal code, material is only illegal to give a minor if it appeals to prurient interest, is patently offensive, and lacks serious value for minors taken as a whole. That is the obscenity framework the Supreme Court built, and it is what "sexually explicit" means in the cases prosecutors actually bring: pornography and child exploitation, not English class.

The school law SB 1007 would have enforced has none of those guardrails. It covers any material that depicts "sexual conduct," which the statute defines to include physical contact with a person's clothed buttocks or a woman's breast. No prurience test. No offensiveness test. No "taken as a whole." A hand on a clothed backside counts.

Classics aren't banned outright. A school can use a book with serious literary value if it gets written parental consent for that specific book and offers an alternative assignment to students without it. Under SB 1007, a teacher who skipped that paperwork could have faced a felony, on a standard of criminal negligence, a lower bar than the recklessness and knowledge the criminal code requires for harmful-to-minors charges.

It's equally plain that no Arizona teacher went to prison. The bill never became law. Whether To Kill a Mockingbird even meets the definition is an open question; the rape at the center of the novel is described through trial testimony, not depicted. And the closest national test case went nowhere: in Granbury, Texas, an investigator drafted charges against school librarians over library books, and the prosecutor never filed them.

Gress is right that "prison for teaching Mockingbird" is an exaggeration. His opponents are right that he voted to put a felony behind a definition far broader than obscenity. Both of those things are true at once.

Gress has never hidden who he is; his campaign biography introduces his partner, Daniel. He also holds positions that put him at odds with LGBTQ advocates. Equality Arizona rates him "Opposed," Phoenix New Times reported that he voted for six bills in the 2023 session that the paper described as anti-LGBTQ, and Turning Point Action endorsed him.

None of that has spared him the slurs. Hate, it turns out, doesn't check a voting record first.

LD4 is one of a handful of districts that could decide control of the Legislature. Republicans have held the Arizona House since 1966. On Nov. 3, Democrats Caputi and Gresham face Republican Reps. Gress and Pamela Carter for the district's two House seats.

The candidates agree on almost nothing: not the budget, not vouchers, not residency, not what a 2024 vote meant. Gress's answer suggests they can agree on one thing. Nobody running for the statehouse should have to look over their shoulder on a stranger's doorstep.

Anyone with information on the threats can call Scottsdale Police at 480-312-5000.

This story is built from Rep. Matt Gress's written answers to The Arizona Inquirer on Oct. 23; the Caputi campaign's Oct. 21 release and Caputi's Oct. 23 answers to the Inquirer; Scottsdale Police statements reported by JNS; KJZZ's Oct. 8 and Oct. 22 reports; Arizona Mirror coverage of the LD4 race; the ADLCC's LD4 page; Equality Arizona's 2026 voter guide; Phoenix New Times; the text of A.R.S. 15-120.03 and 13-3501; the House summary of SB 1007 and its April 3, 2024 roll call; and NBC News reporting on Granbury, Texas. Gress's account of slurs against him is his own; he did not share examples and we have not seen them. We found the Mockingbird-adjacent claim on the ADLCC's LD4 page but not in any Caputi or Gresham ad, and we have not confirmed whether 15-120.03 has ever been enforced against an Arizona school since it passed in 2022. We are looking for that ad, any paid Republican or outside-group ads in LD4 targeting Caputi, and prosecutors and defense lawyers willing to say how they would read the school law's definition. Questions went to Gress, who answered, and to the Caputi campaign, which answered earlier questions; Gress was not asked separately about his SB 1007 vote.