Key Points:

• A clean energy slate of candidates will control the Salt River Project board

• Turning Point-backed candidates fell short despite massive investments

• The results could foreshadow the outcome of November contests in the state 

Turning Point fell short of preventing a “clean energy” majority on the Salt River Project power board, signaling a rebuke of the conservative group and an increase in voter interest in energy issues. 

The clean energy contingent now has an eight to six majority on SRP’s Agricultural Improvement and Power District board, which oversees energy policy and customer rates. Turning Point Action launched an unprecedented localized campaign to prevent a clean energy majority on the board, but only managed to hold on to the board’s president and vice president seats and two of the seven other board seats up for grabs this year. 

In posts on X, Turning Point executives declared victory despite falling short of their original goal.

“Democrats had told donors this was the inevitable year they would win President and Vice President of SRP and control the agenda. They failed massively with a huge turnout,” Tyler Bowyer stated. “Ballot chasing works!”

But political consultants and energy experts say the results show voters are becoming disillusioned with both the Turning Point brand and the federal government’s energy policy agenda. 

“Turning Point made this election about them,” said independent consultant Chuck Coughlin. “It is a very poor time to be associated with the president with his poll numbers where they are, and they became the turnout mechanism.”

The normally-quiet utility race was dominated by Turning Point’s get-out-the-vote efforts, which began in the summer of 2025, and its seemingly endless resources. A political action committee formed by local construction executive Jimmy Lindblom to support conservative energy candidates even admitted defeat. 

“First, we congratulate Chris Dobson and Barry Paceley on their victories for President and Vice President,” Lindblom said in a statement. “While we are encouraged by their leadership, we are disappointed by the results in several other board races.”

As president, Dobson will set the board’s agenda, but his vote will still be part of the minority. Paceley will be a non-voting member as vice president and will primarily serve to fill in for Dobson in the case of any absences. 

Autumn Johnson, the executive director of the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association, noted that Dobson isn’t exactly known in the energy space as an anti-Green New Deal extremist.

“(Turning Point is) acting like a Donald Trump person won … (Dobson) is a moderate, he has developed wind projects on his own land, he spoke at my solar conference two years ago,” Johnson said. “The guy is not like a fringe, right-wing guy.”

Johnson said Turning Point spent too much time and energy on the president, vice president and at-large board seats, while the clean candidates devoted their efforts to the acreage seats in voting areas 4, 6 and 8. Coughlin said that the Turning Point candidates had the right messaging, but it was overshadowed by their association with the group. 

“Parts of the SRP campaign were super good, affordability, reliability, cost of power. They had solid messaging all around the deck,” Coughlin said. “But it didn’t matter, because Turning Point became the issue, and that turned out gobs of people who have never voted in an SRP election ever.”

SRP is a nonprofit subdivision of the state that provides water and power to more than 2 million people throughout the Valley, from Chandler and Scottsdale to Goodyear and Peoria. While the state’s other major utilities are regulated by the Arizona Corporation Commission, SRP is regulated by a board made up of landowners within its service territory — many of whom are descendants of the farmers and ranchers who put up their land as collateral to ensure the construction of the Roosevelt Dam in the 1900s. 

SRP elections are uniquely arcane, thanks to a voting system created before Arizona was granted statehood, meaning only around 40,000 of the utility’s 2 million customers can weigh in on its leadership. The utility is regulated by two organizations, the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association and the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District. 

Only landowners can vote in SRP elections and only some of those eligible voters can vote in both association and district elections. Landowners are entitled to a certain number of votes based on acreage, except in the case of the district’s at-large board members who are elected under a one-landowner, one vote system.

Voters elect a president and vice president to oversee both the association and district. Ten board members and 30 council members are elected to oversee the association from SRP’s 10 voting areas, while 14 board members and 30 council members are elected to oversee the district.

Johnson said the April 8 results were “nothing short of miraculous,” as it marks the first time the SRP board has had a pro-renewable energy majority in its over 120 year history. She attributes it to a growing concern over soaring utility bills. 

“This is probably the first election in my lifetime when energy would probably make somebody’s ranking list of the things that they care about,” Johnson said.

Two seats on the state’s other utility oversight board, the ACC, are also up for grabs this year. Johnson said the SRP results should put those candidates — four on the Republican side, including two incumbents, and two on the Democratic side — on notice. 

But it should also serve as a reflection of “pent-up angst” that voters seem especially willing to take out on Republican candidates, not just in Arizona but across the country, Coughlin said. 

The SRP results could foreshadow the results of contests set to take place in November. 

“People waiting two and a half hours in line to vote for a utility governance board should make people pretty concerned about the amount of fervor that’s going to be around the November election,” Johnson said.