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Someone in Virginia is trying to influence an election in Tempe.
A Republican Super PAC paid for and distributed mailers against two of the four Tempe City Council candidates on the ballot in the city’s first runoff election in more than a decade. The election is scheduled for next week.
The mailer condemns the two challengers on the ballot, Bobby Nichols and Brooke St. George, calling them socialists and forecasting a grim future for Tempe if they won council seats. The flyers were paid for by the Arizona First Fund, “with 100 percent from out of state contributors.”
Courtesy of Ron Tapscott
Longtime political observers said this type of outside partisan meddling is unprecedented in Tempe and seems designed to inflame tensions in a city whose local elections are nonpartisan and typically focus on municipal issues like how to keep the sidewalks clean.
“This brings a level of toxicity to politics in our city we certainly do not need,” said activist Ron Tapscott. “We have our own contentious debates about policy issues and directions the city should go in, but this kind of material should never be introduced to our city.”
The mailer makes sweeping accusations against Nichols, who has aligned himself with the Democratic Socialists of America, and St. George, who has not. It does not mention the incumbents on the ballot, city councilmembers Jennifer Adams and Berdetta Hodge. All of the candidates are registered Democrats.
“Don’t let socialists Bobby Nichols and Brooke St. George make Tempe a magnet for the homeless and crime,” the flyer reads. “The last thing Tempe needs are the dangerous policies being pushed by socialists Bobby Nichols and Brooke St. George to deal with homelessness and crime. Their policies will only make things worse in Tempe.”
Courtesy of Ron Tapscott
The flyer is the second sent out by Arizona First Fund. The first declared that under Nichols and St. George, the city’s parks will become drug dens overrun with homeless people. The flyers appear to reference Nichols’ and St. George’s opposition to a short-lived Tempe ordinance that would have placed restrictions on groups that gather in city parks to distribute food to the unhoused. The ordinance, which never went into effect, was quickly repealed after strong backlash from the community.
Tapscott said that he hopes everyone, elected or not, condemns the flyers. “It’s being introduced by outsiders,” he said. “It needs to be roundly criticized.” Nicole Leonardi, who is St. George’s campaign manager, agreed.
“It’s been really disappointing to watch outside groups try to drag a nonpartisan Tempe race into the kind of negative, misleading politics people are so tired of,” Leornardi said in a statement. “The lack of transparency around who is funding these attacks should concern everyone in our community.”
Nichols expressed confusion about what skin the PAC’s donors have in Tempe’s game. “I don’t really understand where the stakes are for the Republican group,” he told New Times. Hodge, one of the incumbents, also condemned the attempts at outside influence.
“I have substantive disagreements with my opponents about how to move Tempe forward. We need real debates, not hit-jobs. There’s no place for that in Tempe,” Hodge said in a written statement.
Adams did not respond to requests for comment.
City of Tempe
Follow the money
The origin of the money for the flyers is a bit of a mystery. Campaign finance documents show a matryoshka doll of PACs and political consultants, including two figures with ties to GOP Rep. David Schweikert, who is running for Arizona governor.
The Arizona First Fund PAC registered with the Arizona Secretary of State on April 23. Its website reads that the fund is “committed to electing leaders who believe in the conservative principles of limited government, lower taxes, and freedom!” The PAC lists Republican political consultant Chris Baker, who works for Schweikert’s gubernatorial campaign, as its chairman. Additionally, Tori Kingston, who lists herself as Schweikert’s former finance director on LinkedIn, is the PAC’s treasurer.
The Arizona First Fund has submitted one financial filing to date, covering the reporting period April 1 through May 2. According to that filing, the PAC had $20,000 in cash at the start of the reporting period. By the end of the period, it had $98 left. Of that $20,000, $50 went towards bank fees and the rest went to TSC Impact LLC. That LLC and the PAC are registered at the same Scottsdale address, which belongs to a residence owned by Baker.
The PAC designated $5,200 as operating expenses for communications and advertising for “issue advocacy.” It listed $14,652 in independent expenditures split evenly on mailings to oppose the Nichols and St. George campaigns.
The original $20,000 cash contribution came from Conservatives for Effective Government, a super PAC registered in Virginia. According to the filing, the super PAC made the contribution the day after the Arizona First Fund registered with Arizona. According to the Federal Election Commission, CEG’s treasurer is Chris Marston of Election CFO, who provides outsourced treasury services. The money trail ends there.
New Times reached out to Baker, Kingston and Marston but did not receive responses. A request for comment sent to Campaign Financial, a compliance consultant listed as the contact for the Arizona First Fund in its filings, has not been returned.
This isn’t the first time mysterious donors have made an effort to sway things in Tempe. Last year, when DSA volunteers mounted a petition effort to force a repeal of the parks ordinance on the ballot, paid counterpetitioners with murky backing began popping up around town. Because there was no election-specific issue at that point, there were no requirements about disclosing the donors behind the counterpetitioners.
However, the requirements are different for mailers that specifically take on candidates standing for election. In a Facebook post on a community group created for the election, and in a statement to New Times, former Tempe City Councilmember and Democratic state Sen. Lauren Kuby said that she thinks the lack of transparency about where Arizona First Fund gets its money breaks a Tempe ordinance passed during her tenure.
“I believe this mailer violates the Keep Dark Money out of Tempe ballot prop, which passed by 93.44%,” Kuby wrote. “Under that ordinance, Independent Expenditure Committees must reveal their original source donors.”
Another PAC, Neighbors for Strong Communities, has spent around $50,000 on negative campaign flyers, texts and digital ads. Its filings are more transparent, with the source of its money listed as coming from places like the city’s firefighter and police unions, but Kuby wrote that she thought it might be in violation of the ordinance, too.
Nichols said that he understands why Neighbors for Strong Communities sent out fliers. The groups funding the PAC have their own stake in how the city is run and don’t want to lose influence in city hall. But he doesn’t see the endgame for Arizona First Fund.
And the mailers might be backfiring, he said. People have reached out to him about them. Some say they know of him or St. George and that they think the mailers are “ridiculous.” But others will say they didn’t know anything about the election until they received the mailers or the texts. Now they plan to vote for him.
“Clearly, if you’re pissing people off to this degree and they’re acting so irrationally, you must be doing something right,” he said they tell him.
