It’s a scandalous tale of alleged initiative interference, sketchy-at-best finances, mysterious applicants and mass confusion — all brought to you by the folks who like Arizona school vouchers just the way they are.
Allegations have been circulating that one of the initiatives to regulate Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program (the formal name for Arizona’s voucher program) is a decoy — a very similar-looking initiative established to confuse potential signers and sabotage the efforts of the other.
Attorney Jim Barton represents Protect Education, Accountability Now, which is backed by groups like Save Our Schools Arizona and the Arizona Education Association. Their ballot measure would add guardrails to ESAs.
(The names of the groups and their petitions get confusing. To simplify matters, we’ll call the Protect Education supporters “Team Protect.”)
Barton is among those who believe a separate ballot initiative, the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act, is a decoy.
In fact, the effort reminds him of the Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act, which acted as a tobacco-backed decoy against the more aggressive Smoke-Free Arizona Act in 2006.
(That measure is backed by political action committee Fortify AZ, so let’s call them “Team Fortify.”)
“The so-called blocking campaign being waged by Fortify AZ is unlike any I have seen in Arizona,” Barton said. “Fortify AZ combines (blocking and ‘decline to sign’) and has dispatched very aggressive operatives throughout the state… This effort is an order of magnitude more aggressive than those before it.”
One of these things is not like the other
The Protect Education Act and the Arizona ESA Reform and Accountability Act are suspiciously similar. In fact, Reform and Accountability Act copies Protect Education’s petition language nearly word for word.
That’s not a big deal, campaign spokesman Barrett Marson said. What matters is the ballot language, which is “what people will read when they get the handbook from the secretary of state,” he said.
Protect Education’s cease-and-desist letter lays out the subtleties in the Protect Education and Fortify AZ’s petition language. The letter was sent to Fortify AZ chair Gordon Berg and Petition Partners, which was hired by Fortify AZ to collect signatures.
But Barton argues the similar language is a deliberate attempt to confuse and mislead voters.
“When Fortify AZ folks claim that their petition is ‘the same’ as ours, that is making a false representation in order to trick someone into signing that petition,” Barton said.
The guardrails proposed by Team Protect include requiring schools that receive vouchers to follow many of the same rules as public schools. It would also add an income cap and disqualify parents who have knowingly misused monies.
Team Fortify also want guardrails, but they look much different. Marson, the spokesperson for Fortify AZ, gave one example.
He said Team Protect’s proposal cuts off the middle class from access to school vouchers by instituting an income cap at $150,000; Team Fortify doesn’t have an income cap.
Figures vary, but the median “middle class” income in Arizona cashes in at about $81,000, per the Copper Courier.
Additionally, both “teams” want students who receive vouchers to have to take standardized tests, but Team Protect Education wants one test to be administered universally, while Team Fortify wants private schools to use the test of their choosing.
But those relatively small differences make a big difference in the effect of the initiative.
And the similarity of the two initiatives has forced Team Protect to adjust on the fly, attempting to help people identify which petition they are signing in real time, according to Team Protect volunteer Kelley Fisher.
“Some people are very afraid (to sign) if they’ve already signed the other one,” Fisher said. “I explain to them what it is, and they say, ‘No, I think I signed the other one.’ You have to go through the whole explanation of it’s okay — you can sign both. All you’re doing is approving it to be on the ballot for the voters to decide.”
Another difference is that Team Protect submitted its ballot language to the Arizona Legislative Council for a 30-day review before releasing it into the wild.
Submitting language to the Council isn’t required, but it’s a good idea to ensure the initiative is constitutional and will pass muster in court, a Legislative Council office employee told the Agenda.
Fortify AZ did not submit its initiative to the Legislative Council for review.
So, Team Protect Education is going to do the legwork. It recently asked the Legislative Council to take a hard look at Team Fortify’s language.
In a letter earlier this month, Team Protect urges the Council to examine the opposition’s text for “errors in drafting, confusing, conflicting or inconsistent provisions, as well as any potential conflicts with other state and federal laws.”
Initiatives can do that review by Legislative Council to protect against future lawsuits — and skipping that step could turn out to be a fatal flaw if Team Protect is right that the initiative’s lack of a funding source is constitutionally problematic.
Bad behavior
In April, Team Protect composed a cease-and-desist letter accusing Fortify AZ and the petition circulation firm it hired, Petition Partners, of endorsing combative practices like petition worker poaching and harassing Protect Education signature gatherers.
“Petition Partners was paying a bounty for each circulator successfully poached from the Committee’s campaign. This is not aggressive competition for labor; it is a targeted, financially incentivized scheme,” per the cease-and-desist letter.
Meanwhile, Team Fortify-aligned Facebook groups detail when and where Team Protect petition gatherers will be stationed. In fact, a Google Doc provided to the Agenda by an official associated with Team Protect indicates a lot of effort is being put into organizing chaos.
People are answering the call, Fisher said, and the exchanges on the ground have gotten heated.
While Fisher was collecting signatures at Glendale’s Foothills Aquatic Center, a woman approached the Team Protect booth, smiling pleasantly.
“She came walking over as if she was going to sign,” Fisher recalled. “She started asking us a bunch of questions, and we happily answered. She flipped on us, saying all these things were lies, and then there was no misuse (of ESAs).”
The woman left and returned with a large whiteboard scrawled with the political catchphrase “decline to sign” and a thick stack of papers. She parked her chair beside the Team Protect booth, shouting and waving the stack of papers in the air.
They asked the Team Fortify woman to leave. Then things got personal.
“She asked me what I did, and I said, ‘I am a 27-year kindergarten teacher,’” Fisher said.
Fisher said the woman leaned in towards her, closely.
“Oh, you teach little kids. I bet you teach them sex education. I bet you like that.”
That’s when Fisher decided she’d had enough, she said.
“I probably got a little angrier than I should have.”
Kelley Fisher is a longtime educator and volunteer for the Protect Education, Accountability Now ballot measure signature drive.
The mashup of decline-to-sign and blocking efforts, along with the campaign’s aggressiveness, is unprecedented, Barton said.
“I have never had to send a letter like this in a petition gathering campaign because I have never seen actions as desperate as we are witnessing in this campaign,” Barton said.
Financial back(hand)ing
The Team Fortify crew is backed entirely by two contributions from the American Federation for Children, a national pro-school choice organization, according to Arizona campaign finance records.
American Federation for Children’s most notable backer is controversial former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Before she served as Education Secretary, DeVos headed AFC.
AFC gave $1.3 million to Fortify AZ during the first quarter of campaign finance reporting (January to March 2026) alone. So far, $1.25 million of the group’s funding has gone to Petition Partners.
Team Protect has garnered much more funding: nearly $4.5 million. Those contributions come primarily from the National Education Association, augmented by donations from Arizonans for Quality Education and dozens of individuals.
So who the heck are the Arizonans behind team Fortify? Are there any? We know who DeVos and American Federation for Children are, but what about local applicants?
“Gordon Berg” is the designated “applicant and chair” on Fortify AZ’s paperwork.
The Gordon Bergs in Arizona we found have lovely obituaries, except for one with an active Facebook account.
“Gordon Berg’s” address on the application is traced back not to a residence, but to InCompliance, LLC. The firm describes itself on its website as “an Arizona-based full-service consulting and campaign finance compliance firm.”
The phone number on Fortify AZ’s application goes to InCompliance.
Team Protect’s attorney said of Team Fortify’s mysterious applicant: “I am not familiar with him in any way. That said, it is standard behavior for out of state-funded PACs like this one to use an otherwise unknown person.”
Marson isn’t exactly tight with Berg, either, saying, “We’ve talked a few times.”
Team Protect has recently gone on a hiring spree, contracting with another petition circulation firm, Fieldworks, to ramp up signature gathering and counter the army of paid petition circulators that Team Fortify has on the ground.
Both initiatives have until July 2 to submit around 256,000 valid signatures from Arizona voters in order to qualify for the November ballot.
Those reinforcements are a welcome addition for locals like Fisher, the volunteer who was accosted by by an angry opponent. But the battle is far from over.
“It’s very hard,” Fisher confessed. “But we’ll still keep pushing to make a difference. (Students) deserve it. The ‘negative’ and the ‘anti’ are always the smaller group, but they have the louder voice. The rest of us just put our heads down and do our job.”
It’s all politics: A few weeks after high-profile Arizona Republicans berated Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego for being friends with disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell, they had little to say about the revelation that Republican Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff who’s running for Congress, sexted with several women and then threatened them to keep it quiet, the Republic’s Laura Gersony and Robert Anglen report. One of Lamb’s biggest backers, Peoria mayor Jason Beck, hung up on reporters when they asked him about it. So did Kari Lake.
Sounds like a real emergency: After making a splashy announcement about supposed voter fraud and then dragging his feet for weeks, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap finally sent the Arizona Attorney General’s Office information about 207 voters Heap said were non-citizens, per Votebeat’s Sasha Hupka. The handoff came after Heap turned over the information to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (which happens to be led by a Republican) and said he’d send it to the AG’s Office (which is led by a Democrat), too. But the AG’s Office had to send two letters demanding the information and threatening legal action if he didn’t turn it over.
Gifted filmmakers: The Goldwater Institute is going after state tax credits for films again, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. A trial judge ruled that tax incentives for filmmakers — a program lawmakers approved in 2022 that allows for a total of $125 million worth of tax credits every year — don’t violate the Gift Clause in the state Constitution. The Goldwater Institute is now asking the Arizona Court of Appeals to weigh in, arguing that a provision that makes those credits “refundable” (as in, filmmakers might actually get more money than they would have owed in tax) violates the Gift Clause. Plus, the acknowledgement in a film’s credits that it was filmed in Arizona isn’t much of a benefit to the state, they argue.
It gets messy fast: In Arizona, the secretary of state is legally allowed to run for office in elections they oversee, endorse candidates and review campaign finance complaints that could benefit them politically. But the ethics of doing all that aren’t clear, which leads to a murky type of conflict of interest that state laws don’t really address, Mary Jo Pitzl reports for Capitol Media Services.
The best way to sort out murky conflicts of interest is by supporting local journalism.
Making it harder for everybody: The Trump administration says immigrants who live in the U.S. and want to get a green card will first have to go back to their home countries and apply, which could delay the process by years due to a backlog in the immigration system, per States Newsroom. The policy would apply to people who have been living in the U.S. without legal status for years, as well as workers on temporary visas, to name just a few categories of immigrants that would be affected.
The election denialists have identified the latest threat to democracy: envelope windows.
This time, the scandal is that mail-in ballot envelopes have plastic windows that can reveal the voter’s party affiliation.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee posted a helpful explainer video exposing the plot, while also accidentally explaining why it’s not really a plot.
“The county defends this design as an operational necessity so they can quickly verify partisan ballots,” the video’s voice-over helpfully explains.
Indeed, Maricopa County’s Election page says: “With more than 19,000 ballot styles in Maricopa County, the window on the back of the yellow carrier envelope allows us to quickly scan the 2D barcode containing the ballot style to ensure each voter receives the correct ballot.”
Kari Lake doubled down on Twitter, writing: “Mail-in ballots make it easy to commit fraud. The American people want transparency & honesty in elections.”
Just not, apparently, envelope transparency.