Key Points:

• Clean Elections Commission considering heavy fine against Rep. Anna Abeytia 

• Abeytia originally faced $5,000 fine, commissioners want more

• Abeytia failed to file campaign finance reports between September 2024 and April 2025

Clean Elections commissioners want to send a message to candidates who don’t file timely campaign finance reports – play ball, or pay up.

The Clean Elections Commission rejected a conciliation agreement in a 2-2 vote on Sept. 25 for Rep. Anna Abeytia, D-Phoenix, after she didn’t file any periodic campaign finance reports from Sept. 4, 2024, to April 21, 2025.

The proposed agreement would have originally assessed Abeytia with a $5,000 fine, but some commissioners felt that penalty fell short.

Abeytia received $53,000 of Clean Elections funds during the 2024 election cycle. The Commission alleges she ignored multiple attempts from auditors and staff members who tried to inform her about her statutory obligation to file campaign finance reports. 

The base penalty for such a failure is $100 per day, but additional penalties can significantly raise that amount.

Had the agreement been approved under those terms, the Commission would have fined Abeytia $101,000. Commissioner Galen Paton said he wasn’t pursuing that large of an amount, but did say he wants more than $5,000 from the public official. 

“She is a sitting representative and she’s passing laws, but she can’t follow them,” Paton said.

Abeytia declined to comment about the Commission’s actions following its meeting. She was not present for the meeting. 

Clean Elections Executive Director Tom Collins said staff reached the $5,000 amount because they were thinking about a candidate’s ability to pay a recoverable fine. 

“We’re comfortable saying this is an amount of money that is going to bite these people,” Collins said. “This is probably a significant fine to actually pay.”

An investigation conducted by the Commission earlier this year found no evidence that Abeytia had misused any Clean Elections fund or received contributions outside of the Clean Elections’ agreed-upon limits.

“The novel issue here to us is this issue of a candidate not only filing reports timely, but then not responding,” Collins said. 

The agreement would have also prohibited Abeytia from ever receiving Clean Elections funding again, but commissioners are considering a higher penalty. 

Commissioners also pointed out that Abeytia spent nearly $48,000 of her Clean Elections funds with Gumption Consulting, which is owned by her fiancé, Ricardo Serna. Gumption shares the same address as Abeytia’s campaign committee. 

Clean Elections rules do require candidates to disclose if they’re paying a family member, but the definition of a family member doesn’t include a fiancé. Collins said Clean Elections has avoided forbidding payments to family members because it’s difficult to police the issue.

Collins also noted that a $5,000 fine would be the second-highest fine Clean Elections has issued to a candidate since he has been executive director.

In 2010, former Republican Rep. Doug Quelland was removed from office after he failed to report $15,000 in public funds used to hire a campaign adviser. 

The late Republican David Burnell-Smith resigned from the House in 2006 after the Clean Elections Commission recommended he be removed from office when he overspent on his campaign by more than 10%. 

“We could always charge the maximum amount, but is it realistic to think they’re actually going to get it?” said Commissioner Christina Estes-Werther. “Most of the time, the answer is no.”

The Commission also tabled a conciliatory agreement for Hector Jaramillo, a Democrat who ran for the state House unsuccessfully in Legislative District 24. Jaramillo also paid for services from Gumption Consulting, but failed to file campaign finance reports. Clean Elections staff had proposed a $2,500 fine for Jaramillo, but that too could be increased at a future date.