A pro-teacher union political operative may have violated Arizona statute when he co-opted the name of a loose knit group of parents and taxpayers in the Paradise Valley Unified School District.
The activist, Trevor Nelson, is accused of co-opting the name of a group founded in 2022, Parents for PV, in what appears to be a case of election interference and possibly a violation of A.R.S. 16-1013, which makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly use a “fraudulent device… to impede, prevent or otherwise interfere with the free exercise of the elective franchise of any voter, or to compel, induce or to prevail upon a voter either to cast or refrain from casting his vote at an election, or to cast or refrain from casting his vote for any particular person or measure at an election.”
According to the ad hoc Parents for PV group, since the time the group formed in 2022, individual members and the group itself “have come under attack by members of experienced and well-funded groups and individuals.”
As part of their oppositions’ effort, the group says Nelson “deceitfully filed a Political Action Committee (PAC) in our established Parents for PV name on October 6, 2023. At the time, evidence shows that Nelson was well aware of our movement when he criticized the apple design on the slate signs for Lisa Farr, Eddy Jackson, and Sandra Christensen on Twitter in September 2022.”
“I’ll leave the legal definition of election interference to the lawyers, but it is very clear that he created this group in order to confuse voters and ‘steal’ the identity of a group of parents that he had been watching for a long time,” said campaign consultant Constantin Querard. “There is no good reason for a dirty trick like that and the parents have good cause for being upset.”
While it remains unclear if Nelson’s actions are tantamount to election interference, Republicans are looking to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell to show some backbone when it comes to the increasingly aggressive tactics being employed by those on the left. Liberal prosecutors sought and attained a recent conviction of Douglass Mackey, who was sentenced by a federal court judge to 7 months in prison for what the government says was his role in a conspiracy to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote in the 2016 election — even though his only action was to share a popular meme on social media. Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District accused Mackey of “weaponizing disinformation in a dangerous scheme” to stop individuals from participating in our democracy.”
In this case, the potential violator is doing substantially more than sharing a meme, and Republicans want to know whether or not there are actual consequences for pro-actively adopting the identity of a political opponent in order to confuse and mislead voters.
One campaign finance expert told the Arizona Daily Independent that Nelson’s repeated claims about Parents for PV’s obligation to file as a PAC and his ongoing campaign to marginalize them, including filing a baseless campaign finance complaint, amounts to the weaponization of the campaign finance system to “stop individuals from participating in our democracy,” and “affecting their right to vote by misleading them on what is and is not legal and what message can and cannot be considered in casting their vote.”
The small informal Parents for PV group has not filed as a PAC due to the fact that campaign finance laws do not require individuals or groups to do so if they have not raised $1000 or more.
“Trevor’s actions demonstrate a lack of ethics and integrity. He has managed to only fool himself and a lazy reporter from the Arizona Republic. This experienced reporter should have known better and should have conducted more research and gathered the facts before publishing,” said Eddy Jackson, a member of the group, who is currently a candidate for the Paradise Valley School Board.
“Imitation is the sweetest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness,” said Jackson quoting Oscar Wilde.
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