You’d be hard-pressed to find a political race with a more clear, direct impact on Arizonans’ finances than the Arizona Corporation Commission — yet most residents don’t seem to have any clue about it.
It all starts with the name.
“It’s not necessarily very clear what the Corporation Commission does,” Clara Pratte, a Democrat running for the commission, told us. “A lot of people skip it (on the ballot), or they’ll say, ‘Well, I don’t own a company and that doesn’t impact me, so I would rather not vote for it than vote for the wrong thing.’”
But little do those large swaths of residents realize: Even if you don’t own a corporation, corporations own what you need to live.
It’s a misunderstanding that the public has struggled to grasp for years.
The Corporation Commission is an elected body of five members — controlled right now by five Republicans — that has a variety of responsibilities, the most notable of which is to regulate public utilities in the state, like Arizona Public Service (APS).
Arizona’s Constitution created the commission to make those public utilities — which have a monopoly over providing electricity, water and other necessities to people — answerable to the people, or rather, representatives of the people.
That’s where the commission comes in. It has the power — and responsibility — to approve or alter those monopoly providers’ plans for charging customers. But most people don’t know that.
In both 2023 and 2024, the commission approved a plan for APS to increase rates it charges customers by 8% each year. Since a slate of three Democratic candidates failed to gain a single seat on the commission back in 2024, the utility now wants a staggering increase of about 14%.
Those rate increases and request, interestingly, have come as APS posts substantial profits. Last year, its parent company Pinnacle West brought in $600 million in profits and paid its CEO $11 million.
The Republicans on the commission also repealed key renewable energy standards, which were pushing Arizona toward developing greater clean energy infrastructure.
Two seats on the commission are up for grabs this year.
Democratic challengers Pratte and Jonathon Hill (who also ran last cycle) are trying to knock off incumbent Republicans Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers — while they are facing a challenge from the right in the form of GOP Rep. Ralph Heap.
Until a few weeks ago, Republican Rep. David Marshall was also running, but he dropped out to accept an appointment as Navajo County Recorder that it turns out he isn’t legally eligible to actually take.
You can read our Q&A with Pratte and Hill from March.
Nonprofit organization Arizonans for a Clean Economy recently conducted a poll that found just about 44% of state residents are familiar with the ACC, its Deputy Executive Director Madison Rock told us. (Based on the lack of general public awareness, even that number seems high.)
“On its face and by the name of it, it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with your utility bill,” Rock said. “We’re looking to shed light on the decisive role these five publicly elected commissioners play in deciding how much we pay for power each month. Many Arizonans have no idea the ACC even exists, let alone the enormous influence they hold over our monthly finances.”
It’s a fascinating dilemma — the essence of what the commission does is pretty simple, yet the public simply can’t see beyond the wonky facade.
That’s why Rock and her organization are starting a new campaign it calls “Follow the Power,” which will focus on bumping awareness by reaching people on the internet — that means digital ads on Youtube, social media, on search engines, and even when you’re playing Candy Crush. Rock said it will be a years-long project and won’t simply end with this election cycle.
“We’re really just trying to illuminate the ACC’s track record, especially of approving rate increases for APS in recent years,” Rock said. “Arizonans are paying 50% more for their power bills than our neighboring states of Utah and New Mexico. If you pay a power bill in the state of Arizona, you’re probably feeling the pinch.”
But with fuel costs on the rise — as well as data centers dominating the discourse around energy — there seems to be a shift taking place toward questioning the energy status quo.
In April, voters across the Phoenix metro area elected a pro-clean energy majority on the Salt River Project board, which isn’t under the jurisdiction of the ACC but makes power decisions for a large swath of residents.
Rock said the results put wind in her organization’s sails and, in her view, made it clear that voter education is key to changing the guard — though Turning Point USA also seemed to help turn voters off.
And with fewer than six months to go before the election, the commission is beginning six weeks of hearings related to APS’s rate increase request.
On Monday, protesters gathered outside the commission’s office and dozens of people spoke out against the rate increase during a four-hour public comment session.
Hundreds of people also submitted comments.
“APS has already raised customer rates by 16% in the last three years and a lot of us are struggling to keep up with our bills, especially during the summer,” Ann Kennedy Clark of Gilbert wrote. “Arizona’s extreme heat makes electricity a necessity, not a luxury, we literally need it to survive. Please put the interests of every day Arizonans before the interests of private utility companies that are making huge profits off of us because we don’t have a choice.”
Desperation and frustration feature heavily in the submitted comments.
“Please, I cannot take any more raises to the utilities,” Alexis Marsden wrote. “We live in Phoenix where everyone should have solar but it is not even considered a major source for power generation.”
As Myers noted during the meeting, the commission won’t — and can’t — flat out reject a rate increase. It has to balance the needs of APS with the concerns of the people and work out a solution.
After years of substantial rate increases, challenging economic conditions for working people, mounting frustration, a civic populace that’s learning more about the commission and two vulnerable GOP incumbents, could this year’s decision be different?
The final decision on the rate increase, which probably wont be voted on before December, will be a watermark — as will the election a month before.
If what Dem candidate Hill told us in March is true, public awareness may already be growing.
“Last time going around the state, we’d ask a group for a show of hands — ‘Who knows what the Corporation Commission is?’ You’d get 10% if you were lucky,” Hill said. “This time we’re going back to some of the same groups and we’re getting, you know, 70% of people who know what it is. And so we are making progress.”
Just some good old-fashioned American dick pics: Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb sent photos of his penis to women, and then threatened to sic state troopers on them if they revealed he did it, the Republic’s Laura Gersony and Robert Anglen report. The dick pics don’t jibe with the image that Lamb — who wrote a book about “traditional values in a modern world” — is trying to present to the public as he runs for Congress, although somehow we doubt the pics will make President Donald Trump pull his endorsement.
“Among the images the women said Lamb shared both in messages and in person: A close-up picture of a penis with an offer to measure it; a similar penis picture he showed off on his phone; a photo of an unidentified couple having intercourse with a text telling the recipient to ‘think about that being you,’ punctuated with a devil emoji,” Gersony and Anglen wrote.
Claims denied: While the Republic could lean on a deep digital footprint to show Lamb’s sexting, an even more salacious allegation against Rodney Glassman, a Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general, doesn’t seem to have much substance. The unproven allegations that have circulated for months deal with Glassman supposedly raping his brother decades ago, but his brother says the allegations are false and come from a former employee who’s trying to extort him for $500,000, the New Times’ Stephen Lemons reports.
Dragged to detention: Tucson activists and Democratic elected officials are up in arms after ICE took a DACA recipient from her home as she was getting ready to go to work and put her in detention, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. The family of Karla Toledo, whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico when she was a one-year-old, say she didn’t have a criminal record and was up to date on her paperwork, which allows her to legally live in the U.S. under an Obama-era program.
“She worked in nonprofit foundations, where she helped families pay rent, pay bills, and have food. She’s a valuable member of the community,” Toledo’s mother Veronica Ortiz said. “The only thing I want to tell my daughter is she doesn’t deserve to be in that place, that she’s a strong woman and that she should continue to be strong. God has a plan for her, whatever it may be, and we will always be there to support her.”
Inch by inch: In yet another sign that GOP leadership in the state Legislature are getting closer to a budget deal with Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, Senate President Warren Petersen said “we’re probably 97% of the way there,” per KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky. Last week, Republican Sen. TJ Shope said he expects a deal to be reached after Memorial Day weekend, while Petersen predicted “early June.”
The saga continues: Scottsdale City Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield is taking heat again for an apparent conflict of interest related to the Axon project, J. Graber reports for the Scottsdale Independent. A fellow councilman filed an ethics complaint against her in February, but a judge threw it out because she didn’t stand to make any money from Axon. This time around, the complaint is that her husband, former City Councilman Bob Littlefield (who’s running again this year), runs a political action committee that opposes the new Axon campus. The PAC pulled in $500,000 in contributions that her husband controls, while Littlefield voted 11 times in a way that supported the PAC’s goals. Littlefield says she doesn’t talk to her husband about the PAC and the city attorney told her there was no ethics violation.
The state has spent $118,000 on legal fees trying to stop 12News from getting records about the school voucher program.
What a waste. Instead of paying for lawyers, you could use that money to buy 27 diamond rings, 2,000 sets of lingerie, 800 tickets to Disneyland or 1,100 gas masks. Better yet, you could buy 100,000 condoms.
If you think it’d be ridiculous to spend taxpayer dollars like that, well, parents have already used voucher money to buy diamond rings, lingerie, amusement park tickets, gas masks and, yes, even condoms.