By Arizona’s Politics
Two weeks ago, Arizona’s Politics reported on APS and other “establishment Republicans” donating more than $2 million to the Republican Governors Association (“RGA”), and how that money was working to support the election of GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake. The article created a stir partly because RGA Chair – and outgoing Arizona Governor – Doug Ducey and other contributors had endorsed Lake’s primary competitor (Karrin Taylor Robson).
The other reason it created a stir is that APS and SRP are big contributors to that RGA effort, in what political analyst Chris Herstam calls a “rotten game”. As noted then, we asked both utilities to explain why they gave the monies and their reactions to it benefitting the more extreme Lake.
The question of public utilities and political contributions is a recurring one, and today’s decision by SRP to raise customers’ rates will likely bring renewed interest in it.
Salt River Project (“SRP”) did respond, and a dialogue continued until late last week. SRP raised a few different points, and we wish to present them along with some added context.
SRP made two separate $25,000 contributions to the RGA this past June. Their first reaction to Arizona’s Politics was “Historically speaking, SRP has contributed to both the RGA and DGA. The contributions you are addressing occurred before the primaries. Monies were restricted to administrative support such as for maintenance of the organization and/or event programming. The funds did not go towards supporting any particular candidate.”
We did not include that statement with the initial article because two of the three distinct claims were unsupported. And the article did, in fact, focus on the fact that the contributions were made before the donors knew whether Lake or Taylor Robson would win the primary.
We pointed out to SRP that our experience in reviewing Arizona contributions and expenditures by the RGA – and, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and their Democratic counterparts – *contradicted* the claim of monies to both parties and that the RGA did not segregate monies in admin accounts and independent expenditure accounts.
