Candidate Olivia Cortes on Thursday withdrew from the Legislative District 18 recall election of Senate President Russell Pearce amid ongoing allegations that her campaign was a sham set up by Pearce supporters to pull votes away from opponent Jerry Lewis.

Pearce will now face only fellow Republican Lewis in the first recall election of a sitting legislator in state history.

Cortes' voluntary withdrawal | Recall coverage | Watch Pearce debate live today

Cortes said in a statement that the "constant intimidation and harassment" led to her withdrawal. And her attorney said that the move was the condition of a deal to stop a court hearing scheduled for today.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Edward Burke had agreed to hear additional testimony in a lawsuit challenging Cortes' candidacy, despite ruling earlier this week that she could remain on the ballot. Burke ruled that Pearce supporters put Cortes on the ballot, but he found no fault with Cortes herself.

A Lewis campaign spokesman said Cortes' decision further proves her sham candidacy but said the damage already has been done.

"From the Cortes/Pearce camp, it's mission accomplished. Their goal was to have the ballot printed with other names on it to confuse people, and that's been done," Lewis co-chairman John Giles said. "Voters are sometimes surprisingly uninformed, especially people who are voting absentee."

The ballots already have been printed, and Cortes' name will remain on the ballot. Signs will be posted at the district's 16 polling places to notify voters that she is no longer a candidate.

"It'll be disappointing to see how many people still vote for Cortes," Giles said. "She will continue to have an impact on this election."

Court hearing

Cortes attorney Anthony Tsontakis said Cortes' decision to withdraw was a deal with the plaintiffs.

"The opposing party made my client an offer that if she would voluntarily withdraw from the race, they would vacate the hearing," Tsontakis said.

He said he passed the offer to Cortes, and she accepted.

In her statement, Cortes said: "Due to the constant intimidation and harassment of me, my family, friends and neighbors, I have decided to drop out of the race for state senator . . .

"It has become obvious that it will never end, and they want me to spend my money on lawyers instead of campaigning. So for me, the dream of having a voice has died."

Tsontakis said he couldn't say if Cortes was concerned about today's hearing. He said he never received a witness list, and he did not know what information they may have had.

Attorneys Tom Ryan and Micheal Wright filed the lawsuit against Cortes on behalf of district voter Mary Lou Boettcher. Ryan said there was no last-minute deal offered. He said he offered Cortes that deal before the first hearing last week, and she could have resigned at any time. He said he did not initiate the offer again before this second hearing.

Both Ryan and Wright refused to offer many details about the evidence they intended to produce at the hearing. "Anything more specific should be revealed in an investigation," Ryan said. "We don't want to do anything that will damage the evidence."

Wright said it would have implicated Cortes directly. Ryan said it would have showed individuals in Pearce's campaign were complicit.

Pearce said he does not know anything about the Cortes campaign or efforts by his friends or family to help her.

The Secretary of State's Office is currently investigating who paid for Cortes' campaign signs. The Attorney General's Office said it will wait for those findings to determine whether it will investigate.

Voter impact

A group called Citizens for a Better Arizona initiated the effort to recall Pearce this summer. Members of the group have said Pearce did not reflect the desires of the district, focusing on illegal immigration and gun rights instead of education and jobs.

The west Mesa legislative district has a population of 165,729 and about 70,525 registered voters. About 38 percent are registered Republican, 27 percent Democrat and 35 percent independent.

Yvonne Reed, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, said her office will not reprint the ballots because there's not enough time left.

She said they would have had to reprint the ballots, estimated to cost $171,000, re-stuff the envelopes and send them out before the Oct. 13 start of early balloting. The election is Nov. 8.

Linda Brown, executive director of the Arizona Advocacy Network - an organization that works to support civic participation in the democratic process - said she thinks voters will be savvy enough to not be confused by Cortes' short-lived candidacy.

"In elections like this, it's usually limited to people who are following the election and informed about the election," Brown said. "In this case, the whole purpose of the candidacy was to confuse voters, but I think the people who go to the polls will be fairly well informed."

Brown noted that this is not the first time there have been questions about a candidate's legitimacy, nor is it the first time that a candidate has withdrawn from a race after the ballots have been printed.

"We had a series of sham Green (Party) candidates in competitive districts last year, supposedly to draw votes away from the Democrats," Brown said.

The bigger problem, Brown said, is the erosion of voters' faith in elections.

"Whenever people try to game the system, it plays into people's disgust with politics and campaigning," Brown said. "Ultimately, democracy is the loser, and the people are the losers."

Randy Parraz, who organized the recall effort, said Citizens for a Better Arizona will go out into the community and call voters to let people know Cortes is no longer a candidate.

"Is there a likelihood that someone will still vote for her? Certainly," he said. "But it's our job now to make that less of a likelihood."

Cortes' withdrawal does trigger an opportunity for write-in candidates. The deadline to file paperwork with the Secretary of State's Office as a write-in ended Sept. 29, but office spokesman Matt Roberts said interested candidates now can file until Nov. 3.

Who is Cortes?

In the weeks after she announced her candidacy, Cortes avoided the public: She held no fundraisers, did no campaigning, had no website and shared no information about her views.

The 59-year-old Republican naturalized citizen from Mexico went to extraordinary lengths to avoid the media. It wasn't until a district voter filed a lawsuit alleging that Cortes was a sham candidate did she begin to make brief forays into the public eye.

According to leaders in various Mesa political and civic groups, Cortes has not been active with the Legislative District 18 GOP group or local women Republican groups. She said she is not an active member of any "tea party" group.

Cortes said she was encouraged to run by East Valley Tea Party Chairman Greg Western, a Pearce supporter.

Western and Cortes attend church together. She approached him in July after he had given a talk at church about patriotism and the Constitution.

Cortes testified in court that she has no idea who paid the petition gatherers who collected many of the signatures needed to get her on the ballot. She has no idea who paid for the "S�, se puede" campaign signs with her name on them that were put up around the district. Cortes also did not know who designed and was managing her campaign website.

When asked why she went to such great lengths to avoid the public despite running for a high-profile public office, Cortes said she is a private person.

Republic reporters Ginger Rough and Gary Nelson contributed to this article.