By Elizabeth Whitman | Phoenix New Times
The people running every Arizonan’s favorite utility, Arizona Public Service, are actually admirably creative political strategists, if playing dirty is your thing.
During the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, top executives at APS and parent company Pinnacle West plotted smear campaigns, attempted to feed questions to local media, and even scrutinized the Facebook profile photos of their preferred candidates, caches of documents released in recent weeks by the utility show.
All this is in addition to $10.2 million in dark money that the utility poured into the 2014 race, millions more it openly spent in 2016 on the Corporation Commission race, and more than $30 million in 2018 against renewable-energy ballot initiative Proposition 127, which failed.
Arizona Corporation Commissioner Chairman Bob Burns, who began demanding these records more than two years ago, said the commission is in the early stages of figuring what to do next. Commissioner Sandra Kennedy, who issued her own demands for documents in March, is still requesting documents.
