Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Of the $1.9 million spent this cycle by “outside groups” to affect Arizona elections, $565,000 – or about 30 percent – comes with no disclosure of the source of the money.

With just one week until Arizona’s primary election, political spending to affect legislative races paid for by outside groups that don’t disclose the source of the money amounts to almost half a million dollars.

This fall, Arizona voters will choose three utility regulators, and while one might expect that each of the main parties would run a full slate of candidates, Democrats are only running two.

Summit Consulting Group, a political consulting firm with ties to Arizona Public Service, is paying Sign Here Petitions to collect survey signatures, but only on the condition that signature gatherers sign a non-compete clause, promising not to work on SolarCity’s initiative.

Arizona lawmakers considering a bill that would reduce regulation on groups that spend money in elections without disclosing the source benefitted by more than $900,000 during the 2014 election cycle, in what’s dubbed “dark money” spending.

Of the roughly $7.4 million in individual contributions made to Arizona politics in 2015, about ten percent came from 10 individuals or households.

About $9.7 million poured into state-level political campaigns in 2015, but a ballot measure aimed at legalizing marijuana use for adults accounted for almost $1.1 million of that figure, outraising every other campaign committee during the non-election year.

The Grand Canyon State received an overall score of 64 – a D grade – in a new State Integrity Investigation, a data-driven assessment of government accountability and transparency in all 50 states by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. Despite the low grade, Arizona ranked 22nd among all the states.

Arizona election regulators have taken note of records showing that Corporation Commissioner Bob Stump was in regular contact with the campaigns of candidates he supported and a “dark money” group that helped get them elected, and they want to see and inspect those records themselves.

Arizona Corporation Commissioner Bob Stump repeatedly communicated with the executive director of a “dark money” group that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to help elect the candidates he backed, while also keeping regular contact with those candidates, their campaign manager, and a senior executive of the state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service, according to recently released records.