Buying early
Cash me if you can … The label is independent … And does Crow also have “psychosis?”
The candidates for Arizona’s top executive offices already have more than $14.5 million in their campaign war chests to convince people to elect them next year.
That could fund 230 public school teacher salaries, or fill thousands of potholes. Instead, the top contenders for the state’s elected positions will use that money for things like campaign consultants and election ads.
But all that money isn’t from individual supporters — it’s a massive collection of donations, self-financed loans and big PAC money from special interest groups.
Republican gubernatorial contender Karrin Taylor Robson, for example, gave herself $2.2 million to run TV ads. And GOP State Treasurer candidate Elijah Norton has bankrolled his campaign entirely with $1.1 million of his own money.
PACs have poured more than $131,000 into Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ reelection campaign this election cycle, while Republican State Treasurer Kimberly Yee transferred over more than $144,000 from her old committee to her current bid for schools superintendent.
Candidates’ early public support looks a lot different based on which numbers you pull from the data soup of campaign finance reports. So for each race, we’re breaking down where the money comes from.
The next comprehensive statewide campaign finance reports won’t drop until next year, when the midterm elections officially take over our lives. So in the (relative) calm before the storm, we’re digging into who’s bankrolling the top candidates for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and treasurer.
Hobbs put out a press release last week announcing she had raised “a record-breaking $12 million” for her reelection campaign.
But that’s a somewhat misleading number, considering she has less than half of that in the bank.
Still, in the last three months, she raised a whopping $1.5 million, bringing her total income this election cycle to $4 million.1 (And that’s not including her separate joint fundraising PAC, Copper State Values, which has more than $2.5 million in the bank.)
A chunk of that money came from political PACs – including a few that have traditionally been considered toxic in Democratic circles.
We’re talking about PACs like Pinnacle West Capital Corporation PAC (APS), the Boeing Company PAC and the Microsoft Corporation PAC.
There are plenty of liberal PACs in there, too, not to mention, Hobbs picked up a $10,000 donation from actress Jennifer Garner, but had to refund almost half of that because it exceeded the individual contribution limit.
In the GOP primary, Robson is ahead of fellow Trump endorsee U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs with $1.8 million in individual donations compared to his $1.2 million. Of course, Robson has access to millions of her own dollars (and from her wealthy developer husband, Ed Robson).
Biggs won a $10 million sweepstakes a few decades back, but has been unwilling or unable to self-fund his campaign. Among his top donors are former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dennis Wilenchik, who has graced this newsletter many times for his role in promoting election fraud conspiracies, defending fake electors and generally being odd.
Biggs’ fundraising haul for the last three months was about a third of what the governor raised, and his total war chest (or cash on hand) is about one-eighth the size of Hobbs’.
Meanwhile, David Schweikert jumped into the race just in time to not have to report any financials for the next three months. He has more than $1 million cash on hand in his federal campaign account, and we found it’s actually a pretty complicated legal question if he’s allowed to transfer that money to a statewide campaign.
Several attorneys told us it’s allowed, as long as each donation is accounted for so it doesn’t exceed Arizona’s $5,500 contribution limit for individuals.
While Republican Senate President Warren Petersen reported raising more than Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes last quarter, part of that calculus is the $97,500 loan Petersen gave himself.
Meanwhile, biennial candidate Rodney Glassman gave himself $1 million, and reports raising another $1.7 million in individual contributions. He’s currently being investigated for accepting campaign donations above the donation limits.
Wilenchik gave another $5,500 to each Republican AG candidate, and Glassman got a separate maxed-out donation from Glenn Morris, the CEO of M&M Industries. Sadly, we found out that it’s a plastics company, not a candy empire.
Mayes raised nearly $622,000 last quarter, including $25,000 from PACs like the International Association of Firefighters, and a lot of individual donations from other attorneys.
Petersen’s coffers are getting a lot of help from real estate developers and investors, and the Manufactured Housing Committee and Home Builders Association of Central Arizona PACs each gave him $5,500. Petersen runs a real estate firm in Mesa and works for his family’s home construction company, VIP Homes.
Petersen’s also getting the Diamondbacks’ backing: $11,000 from Diamondbacks owner and GOP megadonor Ken Kendrick and his wife, Randy Kendrick, and $2,500 from Derrick Hall, the baseball team’s CEO.
Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes outraised his GOP opponent, Rep. Alexander Kolodin, nearly three-to-one over the last quarter.
About half of what Kolodin’s raised to date comes from a $95,000 loan, and the other half is individual contributions. Former Republican lawmaker Barbara Parker gave him $1,000, while current Republican Reps. Laurin Hendrix and David Marshall chipped in $1,000 and $100, respectively.
Fontes reported raising more than $545,000 to date, and most of that comes from individual donations. He’s raised $29,000 from PACs, including $5,000 from the “Kirsten PAC,” which is linked to former Democratic state senator and congressional candidate Kirsten Engel.
Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is literally getting a run for his money with a primary challenge from current State Treasurer Kimberly Yee.
Yee was once considered a traditional business conservative, but has linked up with the Freedom Caucus in her bid to challenge Horne from the right, specifically for daring to propose oversight of the school voucher program.
Horne has about $19,000 more in the bank than Yee, but Yee’s campaign accounts are propped up by a $144,400 rollover from her campaign committee for treasurer.
Horne reports owing nearly $1 million in his campaign for ten separate loans dating back to his latest SPI campaign in 2021.2
Democratic SPI candidate Teresa Ruiz racked up more campaign contributions than Yee, with more than $72,000 in individual donations. Democrat Michael Butts (an objectively terrifying name for an educator) has only raised about $2,200, which isn’t enough to make our chart without shrinking everyone else into oblivion.
Elijah Norton, the former treasurer of the Arizona Republican Party, wants to take over for Yee as the state treasurer. He hasn’t raised a single dollar and is instead relying on a self-funded $1.1 million loan.
Democrat Nick Mansour raised roughly $474,000 to date,3 almost entirely from individual donations. The Iron Workers Local 75 PAC threw him $1,000.
He likes her (currently): Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Gina Swoboda officially announced her run to replace outgoing Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert in the competitive, Scottsdale-based Congressional District 1. She rolled out her campaign yesterday with an endorsement from President Donald Trump, which will make for interesting dynamics with the Freedom Caucus types that have accused her of covertly using her position as the party’s leader to convince Schweikert to run for governor so that she can run for his seat in Congress. That Trump endorsement should be enough to clear the field of other Republicans seeking the seat, although it’s always 50-50 that Trump will find a second candidate in the race to endorse. Yesterday, she sent a letter to Republican state committeemen saying she doesn’t have to resign as party chair to run, but she will if the state committee wants her to. In the meantime, she said she set up a firewall within the party “to ensure full compliance with all applicable laws.”
Earmuffs, junior: Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego closed his interview with the New York Times’ “The Opinions” podcast by telling the host — in the most loving way possible — “fuck you” for making him cry in the interview.4 The wide-ranging conversation — which focused on everything from Gallego’s upbringing, to political strategy and how he won a state that Trump also won — is headlined “Senator Ruben Gallego Has Three Words for Democrats” and as far as we can tell, those three words are “big fucking trucks.” Focusing on working-class Democrats’ desire to become wealthy and buy them is one of the reasons he won, he explains.
Just read faster next time: The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously decided the crafting of the Elections Procedures Manual doesn’t have to follow the Administrative Procedure Act, which is the traditional state system for creating such regulations, Kiera Riley writes for the Capitol Times. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes agreed with the court and said the normal requirement of a 30-day public comment period would prevent a timely or complete EPM. Republicans who brought the lawsuit said they remain hopeful that future secretaries will still allow some kind of public comment period. Fontes provided the traditional 30 days this year, but half that in 2023.
“We respect the state Supreme Court’s decision that the APA does not apply to the EPM,” chair of the AZGOP, Gina Swoboda, said. “…I’m hopeful that all future Secretaries of State will provide the public with ample time to comment on draft manuals in the future.”
No labels no more: The No Labels Party is now the Arizona Independent Party, Axios’ Jeremy Duda reports. The Arizona Secretary of State approved the rebranding, which takes effect at the start of December. The party was created for candidates who don’t want to run under the Republican or Democratic banner, but don’t feel it’s fair they have to jump through more hoops (like gathering far more signatures to get on the ballot) than major party candidates.
The best label we can think of is Agenda subscriber, so hit that button.
After the sunset: Arizona lawmakers want an audit of the state’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit program to see if it’s worth extending past its sunset date at the end of the year, the Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington reports. The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted unanimously for a special audit of the program, which was created in 2022 and has been used to build more than 400 housing units. Republican lawmakers like Rep. Matt Gress pointed to the program’s “insignificance,” while Democratic lawmakers defended it as a good incentive for developers to build affordable housing. Meanwhile, Phoenix’s homeless population has risen almost 40% since 2024 and the closing of The Zone, per the Republic.
Today, the UA politely declined to sign President Donald Trump’s “compact” with universities. Our sister newsletter, the Tucson Agenda, has the details.
Meanwhile, up in the Valley, ASU is still entertaining the idea of joining the compact, which says if they bow to his demands to change a school’s culture, hiring and admissions processes and foreign student enrollment, they may still receive federal funding.
And after scrolling LinkedIn, we’re wondering if the compact came up when Michael Crow shared his box suite with Republican U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh over the weekend.
Hamadeh was apparently at the game to honor his brother-in-law, former NBA player Jeff Ayres, who was inducted into ASU’s hall of fame.
In case you forgot, Crow didn’t want Kari Lake at the 2022 Clean Elections gubernatorial debate hosted by ASU/Arizona PBS because of her election denialist views.
Hamadeh still continues to claim that the 2020 and 2022 elections were rigged, and that the judges who ruled against him were experiencing “psychosis.”
An “election cycle,” according to the state’s system, is a two-year cycle — even though Hobbs holds a four-year office. All told, Hobbs has raised more like $9 million since her 2022 election, plus another roughly $3 million to her joint fundraising PAC, bringing us to that $12 million number she touts in the press release.
And it’s worth noting that Horne has a history of problems with campaign finances that spans several investigations, including by the FBI, back when he was the state attorney general. Those campaign finance mishaps are actually how we know about his infamous “lunchtime tryst” with a then-staffer who is now his wife.
Clarification: We originally wrote that Mansour raised $223,000, which is what his report said. But his campaign reached out to say they have an amended report that they haven’t been able to file because of the tech glitch at the Secretary of State’s Office.
He then added, “Oh, sorry, son, don’t use that word,” to his kid, who was tagging along for the interview during fall break.
My parents lived in San Diego before the Interstate was finished and you had to stop going and coming from/through Pendleton. Nobody was interested in lobbing ordinance over PCH. Dr. Crow should have that suite fumigated. Hamadeh is a jerk.
After the destination wedding in Italy and having his buds from the legislature attend.(How do you afford that on $26k a year) helping people with homelessness or just a first home, helping those who can’t afford a home is last on Matt Gress’s mind.