The Daily Agenda: The big donors in the big race
Everybody's watching the Pima County Attorney race right now ... See who's putting up the money behind the campaigns ... Romero's name gets floated to replace Kelly.
A lot of attention, and a lot of money, flowed into the Pima County Attorney race this year.
Last week, we broke down the hefty list of endorsements for challenger Mike Jette and incumbent County Attorney Laura Conover. That’s the public face, the people who stand up and say “this is the person I think you should vote for.”
What about the behind-the-scenes support? Those big-dollar donations kept their campaigns afloat, and led to a lot of political scuttlebutt lately.
We were curious, so we went through Jette’s and Conover’s campaign finance reports and pulled the top donors for each campaign, along with how the candidates spent the money.
First off, a huge amount of money went into these campaigns, and it looks like we’re going to see more money thrown at this race every election cycle. Conover brought in about $280,000 and Jette raised about $250,000. That haul outstripped the $436,000 raised before the 2020 primary and it was way more than the $384,000 in 2016.
For the Jette campaign, we counted more than a dozen people who donated $6,650. Many of them work in real estate, like Colin Riley at Townsend Kane, Oliver Swan at Quad Real Estate Partners, Thomas Sullivan, and Robert Reilly.
The Jette campaign also got a boost from executives at HSL Properties, like $5,000 from Humberto S. Lopez and $6,650 from Omar Mireles.
Also in the mix of top donors were Atanasio Panousopoulos, the head of Delta Fresh Sales produce company, Mohit Asnani, partner in the cannabis retail firm AB46 Investments, and Scott Stace, CEO of Bluespan Wireless.
Some more familiar names include Jim Click, president of Jim Click Automotive Group, and Ross McCallister, an executive at MC Companies. Both of them donated $6,650.
One of those familiar names that’s causing Jette some political trouble is David Mehl, the head of Cottonwood Properties and an influential local conservative who donated $2,500.
As for political action committees, the biggest donation was $6,650 from the Tucson Association of Realtors PAC.
Other notable donors include former County Supervisor Sharon Bronson, who donated $2,000, and a long list of local lawyers, including a couple hundred bucks each from high-profile figures from the administration of Conover’s predecessor, like Amelia Cramer, Rick Unklesbay, and Barbara LaWall herself.
Over at the Conover campaign, the top donors were Conover’s family members, who donated $27,000 last year.
The biggest donations after them were $12,000 from the Arizona List PAC and $6,650 each from the Moms Fed Up PAC, Jojo Tann, attorney at Joseph C. Tann PLC, environmental activist and Democratic Party figure William Roe, and Juanita Francis. Slightly smaller donations came from Pam Grissom, Ivy Schwartz, and Paul Baker.
Familiar names among big-dollar donors were Patrick and Dennis DeConcini, who each donated about $4,000. Farther down the list were Tucson City Council member Kevin Dahl, who donated $1,250, and former Congressman Ron Barber, $2,000.
We also spotted more than a few defense lawyers who handle cases at U.S. District Court, where Conover used to defend clients, along with former federal prosecutor Wallace Kleindienst.
As for the total number of donors, the way campaign finance reports are put together makes it hard to know the exact number. It’s clear both candidates have widespread support, but the 50 pages of individual contributors in one of Conover’s reports probably put her over the top.
So where did all that money go?
The Jette campaign poured money into advertising, to the tune of $137,000, far and away their biggest expense. That money went to paying Foster Advertising to run the advertising campaign, and buying ads in local news outlets and on Twitter. They also spent $19,000 on signs, $10,000 on petitions, $10,000 on printing, and $5,000 on mailers.
The Conover campaign’s biggest expense was paying a handful of consultants (including Alex Kack, who you might know as the “Green Shirt Guy”), which cost about $68,000. They also paid $45,000 to Brink Media for marketing, $46,000 on printing, and $45,000 on postage.
If you want to learn more about the finances of the Jette and Conover campaigns, you can peruse the reports yourself here:
Mike Jette:
Laura Conover:
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$26,000: The amount of money the two candidates in the County Attorney race (mostly the Conover campaign) spent on calling and sending text messages to voters.
It seems to me that those who can donate thousands of dollars to political candidates could also afford to pay a bit more in taxes.
Weird that Wadsack drives a Tesla, but she's probably trying to blend into her neighborhood near UA, which is nowhere near the district that she represents.