PHOENIX — If money is speech, the state’s largest electric utility won’t have the only voice this year in trying to affect who gets elected to the Arizona Corporation Commission.
Chispa Arizona is launching a $2.8 million television ad buy Thursday, Oct. 18, in support of Democratic candidates Sandra Kennedy and Kiana Sears.
The organization, an affiliate of the national League of Conservation Voters, also plans some radio and internet advertising aimed largely at the state’s Latino community.
The move comes as Pinnacle West Capital Corp., the parent company of utility Arizona Public Service, has already put $3.2 million into an account specifically to influence elections.
To date, that committee, operating under the banner of Arizonans for Sustainable Energy Policy, has not made donations to individual candidates. But it has doled out $300,000 to the Arizona Republican Party to support its slate.
That still leaves the utility-funded committee with nearly $2.6 million for a last-minute ad blitz.
Matthew Benson, spokesman for the Pinnacle West-funded group, declined to say Wednesday how that cash would be spent.
“We don’t have any campaign plans to announce at this time,” he said.
And APS spokesman Alan Bunnell declined to say if the company intends to spend money in other ways to influence the commission race.
“We don’t disclose our political strategies,” he said.
Bunnell said the company has promised to disclose all political funding in its annual report. That, however, does not come out until next spring.
Laura Dent, executive director of the Chispa Arizona political action committee, said her organization sees to need to wait and see what APS is going to do.
She pointed out the utility has a record of trying to elect regulators it believes will give it favorable treatment. Two years ago it spent $4.2 million to ensure that the commission remained an all-Republican panel. And the company will neither confirm nor deny it was the source of $3.2 million spent by two groups that do not disclose donors to elect Republicans in 2014.
“For too long the Corporation Commission has been under the influence of the largest private utility in the state that it’s supposed to regulate,” Dent said. “I think it’s a moral hazard that the state’s largest utility, which is a private monopoly with 1.2 million captive audience members as customers, is the dominant voice in the election of its own regulators.”
Dent wants voters to oust incumbent Commissioner Justin Olson, who was appointed to the panel last year by Gov. Doug Ducey, and to defeat attorney Rodney Glassman, the other GOP contender for the two four-year terms up for grabs this year.
Dent said that Chispa, which focuses on environmental issues particularly from the viewpoint of the Hispanic community, believes that Sears and Kennedy will be better choices.
“Latinos are disproportionately affected by climate change,” she said, because Hispanics pay a larger percentage of their income in energy costs. Then there’s the number of Latinos who work outside in agricultural and construction jobs and are exposed to higher temperatures, she said.
“And Latinos are more likely to live in areas with high pollution and they have higher rates of asthma,” she said.
But Dent said her group’s TV commercials, coupled with the online and radio campaign, has another purpose: informing voters of exactly what the Arizona Corporation Commission is and does.
Dent said the League of Conservation Voters is the largest donor, though she would not disclose what percentage of the money it is providing.
Alyssa Roberts, a spokeswoman for that organization, said the cash is part of more than $60 million the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund and its state partners are spending this year, including $25 million to affect state races.
Asked about the source of the dollars, Roberts cited reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
The most recent shows billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, as the largest contributor at $2 million.
The funding to help Sears and Kennedy is on top of $250,000 that California billionaire Tom Steyer is spending on their behalf.
But Dent said that neither Steyer nor any of his political committees are funding this $2.8 million campaign, directly or indirectly.
