A final peek at county campaign cash

Voters get a late look at who bankrolled candidates ... Judd pleads guilty in Cochise County.

The final stragglers have turned in their campaign finance reports, so let’s take a look at the roughly $660,000 that flowed into Pima County supervisor races so far this year.

As you might imagine, the most competitive race also was one of the most expensive.

The District 1 rematch between Democratic Supervisor Rex Scott and Republican Steve Spain brought in $205,000 in campaign contributions as of October 1.

Scott beat Spain in 2020 by just 730 votes. This year, Scott is clobbering Spain on the fundraising front, with Scott bringing in $169,000 to Spain’s $36,000.

You can find maps and descriptions of all the supervisor districts here.

But what might surprise you is the fact that the most expensive race was actually in District 3, even though that race likely will be less competitive than the Scott-Spain rematch.

There is no incumbent in the race, since former Democratic Supervisor Sharon Bronson retired last year, and Democrats are putting as much financial distance as possible between them and the Republican candidate.

Democrat Jen Allen brought in $193,000, the largest haul of any supervisor candidate this year, while Republican Janet Wittenbraker came in with $32,000, for a total of $225,000.

Over in District 4, Democratic challenger Vanessa Bechtol, who raised $104,000, was way ahead of incumbent Supervisor Steve Christy’s $42,000 (not including cash from his previous campaign).

The two least expensive, and least competitive, races were in Districts 5 and 2, where Democrats have big voter registration advantages.

Democratic Supervisor Adelita Grijalva brought in about $50,000 in District 5, far outstripping the $3,700 raised by independent Val Romero, who didn’t report raising much money since mid-July.

In District 2, Democratic Supervisor Matt Heinz raised around $19,000, while Republican challenger John Backer brought in $12,000.

These campaigns are not sprawling operations, with paid staffers running offices spread out across the county. The reports show most candidates ran their own campaigns with volunteers and spent the bulk of their money on signs, advertising, and mailers.

Allen was the only candidate who reported paying any type of campaign staff, although Grijalva did pay a few hundred dollars for a little help.

The largest campaign expense we found was Bechtol paying Uplift Campaigns, a digital media firm that works on Democratic campaigns (and also tracks the voter turnout we often cite in the Agenda), about $28,000 over the past few months.

Allen paid Resilient Strategies about $22,000 for social media ads and mailers.¹

To get a sense of how broad their fundraising efforts were, we looked at how many pages of individual contributors each candidate listed in their most recent campaign finance reports.²

Democrats generally had the most contributors, with the exception of Heinz, who had just a half-page of contributors.

On the high end, Bechtol listed 32 pages, or roughly 300 contributors. Grijalva had 24 pages, or 200-some contributors.

Wittenbraker led the way for Republicans, with five pages. Christy and Backer each had 1.5 pages.

More than any other campaign, Christy’s recent fundraising depended on just a few donors.

David Mehl, owner of Cottonwood Properties and an influential local conservative, donated $6,650 to Christy’s campaign. Paul Weitman, owner of Royal Automotive, added $5,000. Humberto Lopez and Omar Mireles of HSL Properties contributed $12,000 together. Kathy Watson of Watson Chevrolet put up another $5,000.

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If any of our wonderful Agenda readers have $6,650 they want to give us, we’d definitely take it. But really, we’d be thrilled if you showed your support in a much less costly way, by upgrading to a paid subscription.

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As for political action committees, Allen and Scott both brought in about $11,000 from PACs over the past few months, more than any of the other candidates.

The Jane Fonda Climate PAC contributed $6,000 to Allen’s campaign and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees added $3,325. She also got $1,000 each from the Ironworkers Local 75 and the Arizona List PAC.

Scott received the same contribution from the AFSCME, $3,000 from the Cox Arizona PAC, $2,500 from the North Tucson Firefighters PAC, and $2,000 from Southwest Gas.

Grijalva brought in about $10,000 in recent months. She got the same contributions from the AFSCME, North Tucson Firefighters, and the Ironworkers Local 75, along with $3,000 from Livable Communities and $1,000 from the Tohono O’odham Nation.

That’s the broad strokes of campaign fundraising for county supervisor races this year. If you want to poke around in the reports yourself, you can find them on the Pima County website.

And if you’re curious about what campaign cash looks like in Maricopa County, check out what our colleagues at the Arizona Agenda put together.

Transportation debate: Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock sets the stage for the political discussion over the Regional Transportation Authority’s funding plan at today’s Tucson City Council meeting. Also in his weekly rundown of local government meetings, the Vail school board will vote on the new policy book from the Arizona School Board Association.

Guilty-ish plea: Minutes after Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd pled guilty to failing or refusing to perform a duty of an election officer, she claimed the indictment by a grand jury was “political,” the Herald/Review’s Terri Jo Neff reports. She and fellow Supervisor Tom Crosby were indicted by a grand jury last year on charges of election interference after they delayed canvassing the 2022 election results. The original complaint was submitted by former Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, and former Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley, a Republican.

Faster than they thought: As voters consider who should be the state’s top utility regulators, they’re contending with a new trend: electricity use is projected to rise rapidly over the next decade, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports. Tucson Electric Power said last year they expected demand to rise about 1% annually. But this month they forecasted demand going up 5% a year.

Mexico is the wall: While the Biden administration claims great success in lowering illegal border crossings this year, the Border Chronicle’s Todd Miller takes a look at the role of Mexico’s government, including the Mexican military killing six migrants near the Mexico-Guatemala border this month and the long-term strategy meant to wear down migrants in southern Mexico by hassling them at every turn.

Call to the public: The City of Tucson is considering whether to shrink the window for free parking, the Star’s Charles Borla reports. Right now, parking is free after 5 p.m. weekdays and all day on weekends. City officials want public feedback on a proposal to charge for parking at 1,800 metered spaces, mostly downtown, until 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Spooky skies: The Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium at the University of Arizona is putting on Halloween-themed laser shows, set to the music of popular bands like Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, This is Tucson’s Pascal Albright reports. The planetarium also hosts a live star talk with darker stories about astronomy and the night sky.

80,292: The ballots returned by Pima County voters as of October 20. Nearly two-thirds of those ballots came from voters over the age of 55.

1. We initially identified the wrong group as Resilient Strategies. This is the correct one.

2. Each page usually has 11 contributors’ names. But sometimes people make several contributions in the same reporting period, so you can’t get an exact total just by multiplying the number of pages by 11.