Gov. Doug Ducey doesn’t support efforts by one of his allies to cap pay for public school administrators and mandate a higher level of direct classroom spending.

A GOP consultant is lining up separate citizen initiatives to put more money into classrooms and cap the pay of administrators.

The Federal Election Commission levied nearly a quarter-million dollars’ worth of fines against three dark money groups for failing to report contributions from an organization run by Sean Noble after the Arizona political operative inadvertently disclosed the alleged violations in a 2014 interview.

Tax filings by the conservative nonprofit organization American Encore confirm that Doug Ducey’s longtime ally Sean Noble was at the center of the multimillion-dollar dark money campaign that helped get him elected.

Gov. Doug Ducey, elected last year with the help of a group linked to the Koch brothers, is headed to California this weekend to meet with them again along with some of their wealthy colleagues.

A trio of big names announced a new lobbying and consulting firm that’s poised to make a big splash at the Capitol and the world of Arizona politics.

After spending $1.5 million to help Doug Ducey get to the Governor’s Office, Republican consultant Sean Noble and his American Encore are now doing what they can to make sure he succeeds – including whipping up votes on the budget. ...

Paul G. Ryan asked the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office what seemed like a simple question: Is a state nonprofit that spends money to influence elections actually a political committee?

The dearth of reliable, independent polling in Arizona elections is nothing new. A long-term decline in independent polling by universities and media organizations has left IEs and other biased groups as the main source of publicly available polling for the state’s elections.

The Legacy Foundation Action Fund, an Iowa-based 501(c)(4) tied to consultant and Ducey ally Sean Noble that ran ads in April criticizing Smith for his leadership of the US Conference of Mayors, is suing the Clean Elections Commission and Maricopa County elections officials in response to the complaint filed by Smith’s campaign.