Testing the system
Chasing dark money in legislative elections … We test the state's tracking system … Tucson is the place to be for high-profile politicians.
Yesterday, our sister newsletter the Arizona Agenda wrote about the “dark money nesting doll” that makes it hard for voters to see who’s funneling money into state elections.
Fed up with years of not being able to put a name to deep-pocketed donors, voters tried to put a tracer on that money two years ago when they overwhelmingly approved Proposition 211.
The Voters’ Right to Know Act, as the law is known, requires big-money political committees to disclose where their largest donations came from.
And this year’s elections are the first ones where the new law is in effect, which we’re hoping will make the task of sorting through campaign finance a little less frustrating.
So we set up a test to see if the Arizona Secretary of State’s dark money reports actually would help a voter identify the big donors who back or oppose the candidates on their ballot.
We focused on the only local competitive races for the Legislature, the three races in Legislative District 17, which runs from Pinal County along the north side of Tucson to Vail.
We set a timer for 10 minutes. If we couldn’t find answers about who funded the group in that time, the new system failed the test.
Pass: One group that kept popping up when we wrote about LD17 last week was the pro-Democrat group, Future Freedoms. They support John McLean, the Democratic candidate for the state Senate seat in LD17.
We quickly found reports that showed who funded the group’s activities, including an October 20 report that listed $756,000 in “traceable monies” from Robert Davoli, Robert Stern, Stephen Kaufer and the Service Employees International Union.
The union put up $400,000, while Kaufer, the founder of TripAdvisor, added $33,000. Davoli, a venture capitalist at Gutbrain Ventures in Massachusetts, donated $5,000. Stern, who may or may not be an architect in Connecticut, also donated $5,000. The report lists Stern as unemployed and doesn’t include a state in the address, which is just a P.O. Box.
A separate report shows a $125,000 contribution from Public Wise PAC in New York and lists Eric Laufer, the president of Public Wise, as the original source of the money. It’s not clear if he put up the money himself or if he is just the public face of the PAC.
The 10 minutes we spent on each group is more than you’ll need to read today’s newsletter. If you like concise news that covers a lot of ground, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
Fail: We also came across Opportunity Arizona, which put up about $60,000 for mailings in support of McLean.
We couldn’t find out who funded those mailings in under 10 minutes.
The Secretary of State’s website has a dark money report from Opportunity Arizona, but the list of big donors is blank. It’s not clear whether there were no big donors or the right information just wasn’t included.
Fail: Over on the GOP side, Make Liberty Win Arizona caught our eye.
They spent a lot of money on campaign literature and sending text messages to voters in support of LD17 Republican Reps. Cory McGarr and Rachel Jones, as well as Sen. Justine Wadsack’s failed re-election bid.
The Secretary of State’s website doesn’t include a dark money report for them. We did find a campaign finance report from the primary election season that showed they spent $389,000 supporting GOP legislative candidates in Arizona, including those in LD17.
That money came from a $420,000 contribution from Make Liberty Win, based in Alexandria, Virginia. When we looked them up with the Secretary of State’s dark money tool, we didn’t see any info about the original source of the money.
The explanation for who funded them on their website says: “Paid for by Make Liberty Win Arizona with 100% from out-of-state contributors. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Major contributor: Make Liberty Win (federal PAC).”
The reports filed with the state do include an address for Make Liberty Win. A quick Google search showed that address also matches the WalkAway foundation run by Brandon Straka, a high-profile former Democrat who was arrested for egging on rioters during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Pass-ish: Responsible Leadership for AZ spent big money supporting Republican candidate Vince Leach’s run for the state Senate seat in LD17.
The state system shows a dark money report from the group and some of the big contributions and expenditures.
It looks like the Realtors of Arizona PAC contributed $975,000 to the group. This is the “nesting doll” our colleagues at the Arizona Agenda pointed to this week. The report doesn’t give any names showing who funded the realtors PAC.
We looked up the most recent campaign finance report filed by the realtors PAC and saw dozens of contributions from real estate brokers in Arizona. But our 10 minutes ran out before we could go through the 61-page report.
After our test of the dark money reporting system, it looks like the new reports are a step in the right direction. But there’s still a long way to go before the campaign finance system will be easily usable by the average voter.
If you’re curious, you can check legislative campaign finance info at SeeTheMoney.AZ.Gov. The dark money reports are here, or you can use the Advanced Search.
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Winning independents: Gov. Katie Hobbs traveled to Southern Arizona yesterday to campaign for Democratic candidates in Legislative District 17, which covers Marana and Oro Valley, and is among the top targets for Democrats this election cycle. It’s the “most important district” for Democrats to flip, Democratic House candidate Kevin Volk told the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald Evoy, who tagged along for a day of campaigning with Democrats in the hot Southern Arizona district.
“Not gonna happen, man,” an independent voter told Volk after the candidate knocked on his door. “It’s not you, it’s the party.”
Campaigning outside the stronghold: Democratic U.S. House candidate Kirsten Engel hammered reproductive rights, the border and water conservation as she swung through Sierra Vista for a campaign event over the weekend, the Herald/Review’s Mark Hays reports.
Welcome to T-Town: Vice presidential candidate JD Vance stumped in at the Pima County Fairgrounds yesterday, bashing Kamala Harris, promising to secure the border and cracking a joke about Maricopa County’s voter fraud.1 Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly has been flying himself around the state in a rented airplane, making stops to boost Harris in Sierra Vista, Yuma, Tuba City, Flagstaff, Lake Havasu City and Casa Grande, the Republic reports.
Call to the public: Tucson officials are holding a public meeting October 30 at the Tucson Convention Center to talk about their Community Corridors Tool. The purpose of the tool is to revitalize areas along the city’s main commercial roads, like vacant lots and closed strip malls. You can register for the meeting here and learn more about the tool here.
Jail death: An inmate died in Pima County jail over the weekend after suffering complications with surgery, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jails, has been under the microscope for its high inmate death rate, though there don’t seem to be any suspicious circumstances surrounding 59-year-old James Waddell’s death.
Growing up: Looking back a few months after former Tucson City Manager Mike Ortega retired this summer, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock lauds Ortega’s role in transforming a dysfunctional city government into one that moves forward on multiple fronts simultaneously.
“A sense of mission was missing. The city, quite simply, acted like it didn't know what it wanted to be when it grew up,” Morlock writes.
114,418: Ballots returned by Pima County voters as of October 21. The party breakdown of the returned ballots so far is roughly 56,000 Democrat, 33,000 Republican, and 25,000 other.
Any joke with Maricopa County as the butt is a hit in Tucson.
Thx for the report about dark money PACS. You demonstrate that the Secretary of State's office is making a good effort, though, improvement is needed, with many new ventures.