Key Points:

• Two local CEOs are gathering support for election legitimacy ahead of November

• Gov. Katie Hobbs is trying to tie election skepticism to economic instability

• Business leaders say contested elections create market volatility, investment decline and distrust in all institutions

Two Arizona business leaders want to galvanize their fellow CEOs to combat election result denial in November after the local business community failed to do so during conspiracy theory-fueled election challenges in 2020 and 2024. 

John Fees and Adam Goodman are working with the national Leadership Now Project to encourage their fellow Arizona entrepreneurs to make election legitimacy a cornerstone of their political advocacy. So far, they’ve recruited 60 signatories to their “Election Legitimacy is an Economic Imperative” pledge. 

“This volatility that we’ve had around politics is not good,” Fees said. “It’s not good for investment. It’s not good for our employees. It’s not good for our communities.”

Gov. Katie Hobbs is also trying to connect affordability issues to election denial, telling attendees at the recent “Arizona Over Party” launch that Andy Biggs’ history of promoting election conspiracy theories could hurt investment in the state.

Fees is the CEO of GradGuard, an insurance company, while Goodman is the CEO of Goodmans, a local furniture and design company. Both are independents who endorsed Hobbs’ reelection bid and joined her “Arizona Over Party” coalition. 

“Stable democratic institutions are important for our economy, and things like election denial that undermine them are bad,” Hobbs said on Aug. 4. 

A recent survey conducted by the Center for the Future of Arizona found that 65% of likely voters are confident in the security of the state’s elections. But 54% of likely Republican voters are not.

For his part, Biggs pledged to accept the results of the 2026 election in Arizona when prodded by the Yellow Sheet Report, the Capitol Times’ sister publication. But he hasn’t provided direct answers when asked to name the winners of the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election. 

For leaders like Fees, that is a dealbreaker. 

“This is not an unreasonable ask of candidates that are asking us for money [and] putting themselves in the arena,” Fees said. 

That’s where the Leadership Now Project comes in. It boasts members in 25 states and chapters in eight, which its CEO and founder, Daniela Ballou-Aares, attributes to the unique perspective local business leaders bring to the conversation around election skepticism.

“There is a distinction between those who are taking advantage of the current system and those who are playing by the rules and looking to make it work for everyone,” Ballou-Aares said. “We think it’s an opportunity for business leaders who want to demonstrate that they think that business can and should be part of the solution.”

Fees said he was disappointed by the Arizona business community’s response, or lack thereof, to the 2021 Cyber Ninjas audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results. Leadership Now gave him an opportunity to change that response heading into 2026.

The GOP-led Arizona Senate awarded Cyber Ninjas a $150,000 contract to review the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County following the 2020 election and examine voting equipment. Auditors were fueled by a number of unsubstantiated claims, including that China had somehow manipulated the outcome. Auditors even searched in vain for evidence of bamboo fibers in ballots to back up the claim.

“Nobody in the business community condemned [the audit].” Fees said. “I think it’s important to say this organization is now standing by if that’s to happen again. We’re now prepared for trying to provide clarity and visibility in some of the nonsense.”

Leadership Now developed a political risk framework for business leaders to highlight potential threats, including voter confidence in results, restrictions on mail-in ballots, threats against poll workers and deployments of federal officers to polling locations. 

Fees is not exactly hopeful that those risks won’t come to fruition in November, in part because Arizona has been a proving ground for many of the conspiracies that now dominate the national narrative around elections. 

“I believe the risk is pretty high, and we need to wake up a bit in the business community,” Fees said. “I think that there’s a real chance for these elections to be contested for an extended period of time, and I think that that is going to create uncertainty that is bad for the economy and bad for Arizona.”

Anytime a CEO or local entrepreneur comes to Fees with similar concerns, he encourages them to tour the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, sign up to work the polls, or sit down with an election administrator to learn the process. He and Goodman encourage their employees to do the same, even giving them paid time off to serve as poll workers. 

“The more business leaders can do to support the existing [election] infrastructure and be familiar with it will help demystify the challenges that are certain to come,” Fees said.