Democratic vice president-elect Kamala Harris speaks to a crowd during a drive-in campaign rally at the Pima Community College West campus. Arizonans were heavily invested in this fallβs elections in more ways than one, donating a total of at least $110 million to support candidates and high-profile ballot initiatives.
Arizonans were heavily invested in this fallβs elections in more ways than one, donating a total of at least $110 million to support candidates and high-profile ballot initiatives.
That was a sharp increase from the $60 million that state voters donated just four years ago. And the increases this year were seen across the board, with Arizonans opening their wallets for presidential as well as federal and state campaigns.
βPeople on both sides obviously felt extremely passionate about the presidential and Senate elections,β said Jason Rose, a Republican political consultant in Arizona. βThey saw an opportunity to effect change this way.β
The surge in giving was driven by unusually high interest in the presidential and Senate races and Arizonaβs newfound status as a battleground state. While that drew large amounts of money from out of state, it apparently inspired state residents to contribute more, too.
Democrats appeared to be especially motivated, donating to what turned out to be successful campaigns for president and for Senate.
President-elect Joe Bidenβs victory over Trump was the first time the state had voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1996.
And Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, unseated Republican Sen. Martha McSally to give the state two Democratic senators for the first time since the 1950s. It also brought Democrats one seat closer to control of the Senate.
βThe Arizona Senate race was one of the few opportunities where Democrats were seen as potentially able to flip a Senate seat,β said Kim Fridkin, foundation professor of political science at Arizona State University.
βSince the U.S. Senate race between McSally and Kelly was for control of the U.S. Senate potentially, this played into the reason why there was so much spending,β Fridkin said.
The race between Kelly and McSally was the most expensive in state history, with the two candidates raising a combined $173.9 million.
While most of that came from out of state, Arizona donors accounted for $17.4 million of the total, with Kelly raising $9.4 million in the state and McSally getting $8 million, according to their most recent Federal Election Commission filings.
The 2016 Senate race between longtime Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, his Democratic challenger, by comparison, brought in just $3.8 million from Arizona donors.
In-state Senate donations this year were eclipsed by contributions to the general election candidates in the hotly contested presidential race, with OpenSecrets.org reporting that Arizonans gave a total of $29.4 million to Trump and Biden.
In 2016, the presidential campaigns of Trump and Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton raised just over $7 million in Arizona.
Biden, who got into the race relatively late, raised $12.9 million in the state this year to Trumpβs $16.5 million as of early December reports. Those numbers do not include millions more donated by Arizonans to the crowded field of Democratic presidential hopefuls before Biden sewed up the field.
Fridkin said the competitive Senate race drew more people to donate.
βArizona was a battleground state in the presidential campaign and it was seen as a pathway for victory for both Biden and Trump,β she said.
Rose agreed.
βIt has to do with stakes and it has to do with the candidate,β he said. βThe stakes were higher than usual this year, so there was more money involved.β
Down ballot, donations from individual Arizonans to campaigns for state office also soared, according to data from the Secretary of Stateβs website. It said contributions rose from $13.5 million in 2016 to $23.3 million this year, an increase Fridkin also attributed to competitive races.
βI do believe that control of the state Senate and the state House depended upon flipping a few seats, so this is why there was a lot of spending at that level,β she said.
This yearβs ballot initiatives also drew large donations, for and against. Proposition 207, which legalized marijuana use in the state, and Proposition 208, which raised income taxes for people with an income of $250,000 or more, were mostly funded with in-state donations.
Photos: 2020 General Election in Pima County and Arizona
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Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in Arizona election
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PHOENIX β A judge tossed out a bid by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to void the election results that awarded the stateβs 11 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden.
The two days of testimony produced in the case brought by GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward produced no evidence of fraud or misconduct in how the vote was conducted in Maricopa County, said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner in his Friday ruling.
Warner acknowledged that there were some human errors made when ballots that could not be read by machines due to marks or other problems were duplicated by hand.
But he said that a random sample of those duplicated ballots showed an accuracy rate of 99.45%.
Warner said there was no evidence that the error rate, even if extrapolated to all the 27,869 duplicated ballots, would change the fact that Biden beat President Trump.
The judge also threw out charges that there were illegal votes based on claims that the signatures on the envelopes containing early ballots were not properly compared with those already on file.
He pointed out that a forensic document examiner hired by Wardβs attorney reviewed 100 of those envelopes.
And at best, Warner said, that examiner found six signatures to be βinconclusive,β meaning she could not testify that they were a match to the signature on file.
But the judge said this witness found no signs of forgery.
Finally, Warner said, there was no evidence that the vote count was erroneous. So he issued an order confirming the Arizona election, which Biden won with a 10,457-vote edge over Trump.
Federal court case remains to be heard
Fridayβs ruling, however, is not the last word.
Ward, in anticipation of the case going against her, already had announced she plans to seek review by the Arizona Supreme Court.
And a separate lawsuit is playing out in federal court, which includes some of the same claims made here along with allegations of fraud and conspiracy.
That case, set for a hearing Tuesday, also seeks to void the results of the presidential contest.
It includes allegations that the Dominion Software voting equipment used by Maricopa County is unreliable and was programmed to register more votes for Biden than he actually got.
Legislative leaders call for audit but not to change election results
Along the same lines, Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Friday called for an independent audit of the software and equipment used by Maricopa County in the just-completed election.
βThere have been questions,β Fann said.
But she told Capitol Media Services it is not their intent to use whatever is found to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.
In fact, she said nothing in the Republican legislative leadersβ request for the inquiry alleges there are any βirregularitiesβ in the way the election was conducted.
βAt the very least, the confidence in our electoral system has been shaken because of a lot of claims and allegations,β Fann said. βSo our No. 1 goal is to restore the confidence of our voters.β
Bowers specifically rejected calls by the Trump legal team that the Legislature come into session to void the election results, which were formally certified on Monday.
βThe rule of law forbids us to do that,β he said.
In fact, Bowers pointed out, it was the Republican-controlled Legislature that enacted a law three years ago specifically requiring the stateβs electors βto cast their votes for the candidates who received the most votes in the official statewide canvass.β
He said that was done because Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote nationwide in 2016 and some lawmakers feared that electors would refuse to cast the stateβs 11 electoral votes for Trump, who won Arizonaβs race that year.
βAs a conservative Republican, I donβt like the results of the presidential election,β Bowers said in a prepared statement. βBut I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.β