PHOENIX β State investigators are working to recover text messages that utility regulator Bob Stump sent and received right before last yearβs Republican primary.
Multiple forensic examinations of the phone turned up βthousands of texts,β Ryan Anderson, spokesman for the Arizona Attorney Generalβs Office, said Wednesday.
Potentially more significant, he said the equipment being used has the capability of recovering texts that Stump sent and received even before he had this particular phone.
That could prove crucial to answering questions about what information Stump was exchanging both with the candidates he was supporting, as well as with outside βdark moneyβ groups that were trying to influence the race but could not legally coordinate with the candidates themselves.
Public records already show a pattern of text exchanges. What the examination of the phone should reveal is their content, and whether any laws were broken.
The disclosure comes as a solar-backed group filed suit Wednesday to get its own hands on Stumpβs phone.
Attorney Dan Barr, representing the Checks and Balances Project, has been trying to get the texts since March.
In July, Jodi Jerich, executive director of the Arizona Corporation Commission, turned the phone over to the Attorney Generalβs Office.
βTheyβve had it long enough,β Barr said Wednesday. βEither they have extracted the information from the phone and it can be provided to us, or they havenβt.β
Stump, in response to Wednesdayβs lawsuit, called it βanother tiresome political attack by a D.C.-based dark money groupβ funded by solar manufacturers and installers.
Barr said if the stateβs own investigators canβt recover the deleted messages βwe have somebody who can do a better job.β
That, however, may not be necessary if the state investigation turns up the older messages.
At issue are texts in the months leading up to Corporation Commission races in the 2014 primary.
What is already known is that Stump exchanged 100 texts with Scot Mussi of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, including 46 in a one-month period prior to the primary.
This is significant because Stump was backing candidates Tom Forese and Doug Little in the race.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club spent more than $300,000 last year to get the pair nominated over GOP foes who ran on a platform of promoting more solar energy.
Arizona law allows outside groups to help elect candidates. And because the Free Enterprise Club is incorporated as a βsocial welfareβ organization, it need not disclose its donors.
But Arizona law does say that any effort to influence an election has to be done independent of any candidate. The log of texts, kept by Verizon, also showed 160 messages exchanged with the phone registered to Little and his wife, and another 18 with Forese.
Separately, there were 54 with Barbara Lockwood, an executive at Arizona Public Service.
There is no record of direct spending by APS or Pinnacle West Capital Corp., its parent company, on the 2014 race. But APS has not denied that it spent money through others to influence the outcome of last yearβs ACC races.
