Democrats Lose But Party Wins With Clean Money Turned Dark

In February, in a late night session, Democrats blocked HB2403, a bill designed to stop the practice of turning Clean Elections money into dark money. The bill’s failure in the Arizona House of Representatives on a party line vote caused some intrepid Capitol insiders to follow the money.

HB2403 would have prohibited Clean Elections candidates from contributing public funds to political parties. While a majority of House members supported HB2403, it failed to achieve support from three-fourths of the body, which is required to amend statutes created through the initiative process.

Had it passed, it might have prevented the Democratic Party, or any party for that matter, from funneling Clean Elections money to their respective parties, and end the lucrative but shady practice of running unviable candidates simply to collect taxpayer dollars.

It is against Clean Elections rules for candidates to contribute to other candidates. The Democratic Party gets around that rule by having Clean Elections candidates pay the Party, and then the Party funnels money into the races of viable candidates in other districts. In other words, Clean Elections candidates’ money is redistributed to candidates that have a chance of winning.

Take the case of Elizabeth Brown. Brown ran uncontested in the Democratic Primary for the LD12 Senate seat. Brown received $24,066.00 from Clean Elections. Over $12,000 of that went to the Arizona State Democratic Party. The Maricopa County Democratic Party received $3,500.00 from Brown’s campaign. According to her campaign finance report, Brown paid the Maricopa Democratic Party for “Professional Services – Mailing services,” and the Arizona State Democratic Party for: “Media & Campaign Consult, Volunteer Training, Field Organization, Campaign Finance Advice.” She was fined twice for filing her reports late.

Brown never stood a chance in LD12. Petersen defeated Brown handily with 69,356 votes or 65.10 percent of the total votes to Brown’s 37,178 votes or 34.90 percent of the total vote.

In the LD11 race, Democrat Corin Hammond paid $12,800.00 to the Arizona State Democratic Party. It would be virtually impossible for a democrat to win in LD11, as was the case for Hammond, who garnered slightly over 29 percent of the vote in a three-way race.

Rep. Mark Finchem (LD11) stated, “This is a disgusting perversion of the intent of the voters. For all the talk about dark money by both major parties, I am shocked that there were not enough votes to take the needed action to shut the door on the blatant abuse of the public trust.”

“This issue will not go away, it will taint every member who voted against the sunshine effort; and if Clean Elections does not act to block the practice by rule making we may seek to change the name of the CCEC formally,” concluded Finchem.

Rep. Bob Thorpe (LD6) stated, “Before voting against HB2403, Democrats on the House floor had vigorously fought against three Republican bills that would reform Prop 105, which requires a 3/4 legislative majority in order to fix referendums. Democrats argued that Prop 105 was working just fine. However, an hour later, Democrats killed HB2403 by actually denying the 3/4 required Prop 105 vote, apparently because it would stop Democrats from money-laundering taxpayer-funded Clean Elections dollars into ‘Dark Money’, just like they did with about $114,000 of Clean dollars during the 2016 election. I was told that three of the Democrat candidates, who money-laundered thousands of Clean Election dollars to their party / PACs, actually had the nerve to campaign together in 2016 calling themselves the ‘Clean Team’: Sen. Juan Mendez, Rep. Athena Salman and Rep. Isela Blanc. It’s not surprising that the left-leaning Capitol Times, Associated Press and AZ Republic have so far refused to report on this shocking political scandal.”

Democratic Party 2016 Clean Elections candidates who gave between $33,380 and $450 to either the state or county Democratic Party organizations: