GOP donors abandon Biggs

Most campaign finance stories are about who’s donating to the candidates.

This one is about who isn’t.

One of the most striking aspects of this year’s gubernatorial race between Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican challenger Andy Biggs is that some of Arizona’s heaviest-hitting Republican political donors and allied groups — the kind of folks that former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey reliably pulled millions out of every time he ran for office — are staying on the sidelines, or they’re switching sides altogether.

In Ducey’s 2018 reelection campaign, for example, roughly 700 donors gave his campaign $5,000 or more, basically the max amount allowed under the law. Biggs so far has around 350 donors who have crossed that $5,000 threshold. ¹

Biggs’ campaign finance reports actually look a lot more like Kari Lake’s than Ducey’s: fewer big checks and more small-dollar donors, many from outside of Arizona. (Minus the extraordinary fundraising power that Lake brought to the table.)

In fact, although Ducey endorsed Biggs after the primary election, it’s worth noting he didn’t put any of his own money behind the GOP nominee.

While Ducey’s max donor list was a who’s who of influential Arizona business types, many of those stalwart GOP donors who backed his campaigns are nowhere to be found on Biggs’ campaign finance reports.

And that’s not even getting into the PACs, independent expenditure committees and trade associations that stood behind Ducey and are not backing Biggs.

There are two main reasons a reliable Republican donor (or group) would sit out the election.

Many of Ducey’s former donors seem to be making those calculations this year.

Of the 100 households who donated the most to Ducey and his joint fundraising committee in the 2018 election, only about one in five of those families appear on Biggs’ campaign finance reports or donated to his associated PACs.

A small sample of those Ducey donors who are keeping their wallets closed to Biggs include:

In all, only about one in 10 of Ducey’s major campaign donors (those who gave $1,000+) appear to be backing Biggs this cycle, per our analysis of campaign finance records.

And even some of those who are donating to Biggs didn’t offer their assistance until after he won the primary election.

GOP megadonor and Tucson car dealer Jim Click contributed $100,000 to a PAC supporting GOP gubernatorial contender Karrin Taylor Robson last year.

After Robson dropped out of the race and Biggs won the primary, Click and his wife Vicki kicked in a mere $5,500 each to Biggs.

In other words, the Clicks are still supporting the GOP team, but it’s clear Biggs isn’t their preferred nominee.

Still other stalwart GOP donors are abandoning Biggs altogether in favor of backing Hobbs, who has campaigned mostly as a moderate, business-friendly Democrat.

In fact, some of those in the Ducey-donor circle switched to Hobbs’ side in 2022, when she was facing Lake.

Ernie Garcia, Carvana’s largest shareholder, gave Ducey big bucks for his 2018 reelection bid. Last year his Verde Investments gave $50,000 to a PAC supporting Robson. Three days later, Verde gave $50,000 to Copper State Values, the main PAC backing Hobbs, and Carvana has since added $10,000.

Michael and Cynthia Watts, founders of equipment rental firm Sunstate Equipment, gave Ducey around $35,000 for his reelection bid. This year, they kicked in around $17,000 to Hobbs and the joint fundraising committee supporting her.

Jerry Simms, the longtime owner of Turf Paradise racetrack, personally contributed $100,000 to Ducey’s Victory Fund and another $215,000 from his company to the Victory Fund. This cycle, he’s backing Hobbs (and assorted PACs supporting Hobbs) to the tune of around $25,000.

Still, like any good gambler, Simms hedged his bets. He also gave Biggs $1,000 just before the primary election.

It’s not just individuals backing off Biggs — some of the most reliable GOP PACs are taking a pass on Biggs, too.

The poster child is the Republican Governors Association, which exists solely to elect Republican governors.

The group has been a major supporter of past GOP gubernatorial candidates in Arizona. It spent almost $5 million supporting Ducey’s first run for governor, more than $8 million boosting his 2018 reelection campaign and nearly $14 million backing Lake in 2022 (mostly by attacking their opponents).

It hasn’t spent a penny backing Biggs. (Though it did contribute $20,000 to the Arizona Republican Party.)

In a magenta state like Arizona, the RGA staying out of the race is a major red flag that signals the organization doesn’t think Biggs can win.

Besides the absence of the RGA and some of Arizona’s most recognizable Republican donors, the other thing that jumps out in comparing Ducey’s network to Biggs’ is the lack of business and trade-association backing for Biggs.

Dozens of major PACs representing industries like CPAs or businesses like Honeywell propped up Ducey’s runs for office. Those same groups aren’t going to bat for Biggs.

That’s groups like Salt River Project’s water users PAC, which kicked in around $10,000 to Ducey’s reelection campaign, or the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s PAC, which contributed another $10,000 to Ducey’s reelection. Neither PAC (nor the CPAs nor Honeywell) has contributed to Biggs’ campaign.

Instead, Biggs’ financial lifeline has been Turning Point PAC, which spent more than $18 million in the governor’s race this year.

It’s no big surprise that Turning Point is going big for Biggs.

After several confidence-flattening defeats in recent years, capped by this year’s SRP election, the Arizona-based MAGA group really has to win this one.

Whether that $18 million is a smart bet or not, Turning Point is all-in for Biggs.

Voter information for all: Turning Point USA created and has made widely available a proprietary ballot chaser app that provides users with information about voters in their vicinity — and even allows them to call or text those voters directly, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. It mimics an app that Democrats use called MiniVAN, with the difference being that users of that app need to be linked to an official Democratic list, while anyone can access the voter information through the Turning Point app. Tyler Bowyer, the organization’s chief operating officer, said the app identifies key GOP targets but declined to say how it determines them.

Hell of a boom: Arizona’s power grid is likely to grow faster in the next few years than at any point in recent memory — and most of that growth is headed for data centers, Taylor Griffith reports for KJZZ. It took APS about 140 years to reach 9 gigawatts of peak demand, while more than half of the 8 gigawatts of new capacity it wants to build out by 2031 is for data centers. Republican Corporation Commissioner Kevin Thompson said data centers will cover their own generation, but that investments in grid-wide reliability should be shared by everyone.

Where’s Ralph?: Republican Corporation Commission hopeful Ralph Heap has virtually disappeared from the campaign trail amid a Clean Elections investigation into whether he improperly reported spending on his campaign signs, the Capitol Times’ Reagan Priest reports. Heap still received $370,000 in public campaign funding but hasn’t reported spending any of it yet. Instead, conservative groups have spent over $85,000 on his behalf, and some Republicans worry his absence could effectively hand Democrats a Corporation Commission seat in November.

Legal loophole: Several Phoenix metro-area politicians, including Gov. Katie Hobbs’ lieutenant governor hopeful John Giles, were repeatedly caught by traffic cameras but never paid fines for violations such as speeding or running red lights, the Republic’s Shawn Raymundo and Ray Stern report. It doesn’t take political connections to get out of a ticket — nearly half of photo radar citations issued in Chandler, Mesa and Scottsdale over the past three years were dismissed after drivers ignored their mailed tickets and were never formally served.

The costs of a dry future: Residents of Queen Creek who use significant amounts of water are expressing alarm over the prospect of skyrocketing bills as the town looks for long-term solutions for securing a reliable supply while the Colorado River dwindles, per WaPo. The town’s leaders have proposed and are trying to sell their generally conservative residents on a new “water resource fee” to offset a $730 million project that would tap into faraway groundwater in the Harquahala Basin. The first council vote on the plan — which has received strong pushback — will take place in November.

As voters prepare to cast their ballots in Phoenix City Council’s District 2 race to replace term-limited Councilman Jim Waring, they’re seeing an awful lot about candidate Julie Read’s endorsement from the Arizona Multihousing Association.

The Multihousing Association, for the uninitiated, is the group that lobbies on behalf of apartment owners and developers.

There’s an attack video making the rounds that argues the group is “buying influence” and that the apartment lobby wants to use “our backyard (as) their next development playground.”

Among those pushing the attack is her main opponent in the three-way race, Danny Mazza.

It’s a solid attack, considering nobody likes landlords (or developers).

There’s just one little problem with it.

The group also endorsed Mazza.