Google claws back money from Turning Point-aligned PAC in SRP election

Leadership elections for the Salt River Project are usually sleepy affairs. Dozens of mostly obscure individuals vie for seats on the utility’s governing boards and councils. Participation is limited to landowners and is based on acreage, with local land barons awarded the most votes.

But this year is shaping up to be different. Turning Point Action, the political activism arm of the Charlie Kirk-founded Turning Point USA, has thrown its considerable might into influencing the race to lead the state’s second-largest utility — and, therefore, what 1.1 million SRP customers will pay for energy, and how much the generation of that energy will affect the environment.

Turning Point is backing the pro-business coalition Elected Leadership for SRP. Perhaps even more fervently, it’s working to defeat the so-called Clean Energy Team, a slate of data center skeptics who would push back against the Trump administration’s efforts to kneecap renewable energy sources.

Working along parallel lines was the tech giant Google — at least until recently.

Previously, Google’s name and logo were affixed to sites and signs backing pro-industry SRP candidates. Though Google’s name remains on signs dissing the clean energy slate, you’ll no longer find a reference to the powerful tech company on websites for Arizonans for Responsible Growth, a political action committee bankrolled by corporate interests.

Google was once a financial contributor to the PAC. That’s hardly surprising, given that SRP supplies power to Google’s massive 750,000-square-foot Mesa data center, which broke ground in 2023 and is expected to be fully built by 2030. Google and SRP are also partnered in a project to research and develop long-range energy storage technology, according to SRP’s website. But when it comes to influencing the SRP election, it seems, Google recently had a change of heart.

On Feb. 24, Arizonans for Responsible Growth chairperson Jimmy Lindblom told Phoenix New Times, a Google executive asked the PAC to remove its name and logo from all campaign materials. Google is also clawing back part of the $25,000 it donated to the PAC last year, though Lindblom said New Times would have to wait for the next round of campaign finance reports to find out just how much.

Why did Google buck and run? Lindblom said the race got too hot for Silicon Valley satraps.

“It was one of those things where they donated and they called after there was some reporting against the group and just said, ’Hey, can we just not be in the middle of all this?’” Lindblom said. “And I said, ‘You bet. We’d be happy to refund the money back to you guys. We get it.’”

Google did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But Turning Point’s involvement has garnered a heightened interest in the contest from conservatives, progressives and the press. Could it be that Turning Point — which has a Facebook page featuring several anti-trans posts — is so noxious that Google perceived a threat to its brand that until recently included embracing Pride Month and various diversity initiatives now targeted by the Trump administration?

Not according to Lindblom. He claimed to New Times that Google’s withdrawal had nothing to do with the Kirk-associated organization. “We did not talk about Turning Point,” Lindblom said.

Though, considering Turning Point’s involvement is what has raised the profile of the SRP race in the first place, it’s certainly fair to wonder.

A kinder, gentler Turning Point?

Lindblom said his group was running its own campaign and was not coordinating with Turning Point. Nevertheless, he regards Turning Point’s leaders as “strong allies” who are backing the same slate, registering voters and using similar messaging as his group. Yet, he acknowledged, Turning Point’s involvement has brought “some negatives.”

“I presented to a group yesterday where I heard someone say, ‘I can’t support that candidate because they’re backed by Turning Point,’” Lindblom said. “And I had to say to that person, ‘I certainly understand that you may have reasons why Turning Point has really turned you off politically, but there’s others out there that are not tied to that, that are telling you that same candidate is a great candidate for what Arizona needs.’”

Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point’s chief operating officer, told New Times he has not seen that kind of pushback against his organization’s involvement in the SRP election. 

Turning Point has “injected millions of dollars of capital to protecting SRP,” he said, and had unleashed “thousands” of volunteers to knock on doors, post signs and register voters. The group’s overall mission was “to eliminate radical leftists from contention” — which includes the clean energy candidates headed up by Sandra Kennedy, the former Arizona Corporation Commissioner who currently sits on SRP’s district board and is running to become its president.

Asked if he thought Google’s exit had something to do with any negative attention attracted by his group, Bowyer — who was out campaigning as he spoke to New Times — said he hadn’t seen any negativity directed at Turning Point during its efforts in the race.

“It’s just an incredibly important moment that’s unifying and brings people together,” Bowyer said, “because there’s a lot of center-left Democrats who are not on board for many of the talking points that are coming out of the people who are claiming to represent their side.”

Turning Point is reaching out to “center-left Democrats”? Is this the same Bowyer who bonded with Kirk over their mutual dislike of so-called Republicans in Name Only? Who recently tweeted that Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is “at best a moron” and who back in October blasted Republican Gina Swoboda, currently a candidate for Arizona Secretary of State, and “the entire Democrat Establishment” as being part of “The Uniparty and the Useful Idiots.” 

Bowyer said Turning Point is misunderstood by some, and in fact, the organization has a “huge history” of “building coalitions of what you would consider right-wing or conservative with more moderate factions.”

But Tyler Montague, a Republican political activist in Mesa, ain’t buying it. He called Bowyer “the most toxic guy in Arizona politics” and said he was unhappy that Chamber-of-Commerce types like Lindblom — who happens to be Montague’s cousin — were getting in bed with a group he said was “hated” by some Republicans.

Montague cited bad blood from the successful Turning Point-led recall of Mesa City Councilmember Julie Spilsbury, a moderate Republican who had the temerity to publicly endorse Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego in 2024, thus incurring the wrath of the MAGA crowd. Turning Point used Spilsbury’s 2021 vote for a run-of-the-mill nondiscrimination ordinance against her, with Bowyer slamming it as “a Men in Women’s bathroom bill.”

“Their hallmark has been they just cater to their one little audience, those who their donors and supporters are, and screw everything else,” Montague said of Turning Point. “Here’s the question: Does this mean they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with polite society in the Republican Party?”

Money to burn 

Even if Google did back out due to the Turning Point connection, the Turning Point-supported slate will probably be fine.

The most recent campaign finance report for Arizonans for Responsible Growth states that it has raised $219,000 to date, mostly from huge construction-related firms that stand to benefit from an energy boom that’s made the Valley a hub for energy- and water-guzzling data centers. Those donors include Tempe utility contractor VW Connect ($25,000), Phoenix’s Adobe Drywall ($10,000) and the massive Valley construction company Willmeng, which has donated more than $50,000 along with its employees — such as Lindblom, who is a vice president at the company.

Whether or not Google became queasy at Turning Point’s involvement, Lindblom’s business coalition sees Turning Point’s army of doorknockers as a force multiplier. As a 501(c)4, Turning Point won’t be held to the same reporting standards as Lindblom’s group, and Turning Point’s legions of foot soldiers have allowed Lindblom’s PAC to scale back spending on a ground game.

Moreover, the two entities seem to agree on the agenda promoted by Arizonans for Responsible Growth, which, according to its website, includes a diverse energy mix, ensuring reliability and “growing the economy.” They also agree on their mutual distaste for Kennedy, whom Bowyer called “a failed purveyor of our utilities.” Lindblom’s group has placed signs featuring a large QR code, which leads to a website attacking Kennedy.

That website cherry-picks certain votes from Kennedy’s long career in public service, saying she “voted to raise our rates.” Notably, the items listed as evidence are mostly about smaller utilities that were at risk of going under or had other management issues, according to the articles cited on the website. 

Kennedy defended those votes to New Times, saying she was always willing to help out “mom-and-pops so that they could continue to operate,” but that she looked askance at rate increase requests from “the biggies,” she called them.

That was certainly the case when it came to SRP’s most recent rate increase — which upped the monthly bills of the average residential customer by 3.5%, though data centers saw only a 1.5% bump — Kennedy and her fellow clean energy stalwarts on SRP’s board of directors voted against the hike. It still sailed through 10-5, according to minutes of the Feb. 27 meeting. Several who voted in favor of the rate hikes are running in the SRP elections and have been endorsed by Lindblom’s pro-business PAC.

Naturally, Kennedy doesn’t like the proliferation of QR code signs, which still boast Google’s support. But she said the website itself won’t fool anyone who knows her.

“I’ve always fought for the little people, and I’ve always made the big corporations do what they should do,” she said. “You can’t buy me.” 

This story is part of the Arizona Watchdog Project, a yearlong reporting effort led by New Times and supported by the Trace Foundation, in partnership with Deep South Today.