Morning Digest: Clean energy just won big in Phoenix. Advocates now want to go statewide.
Two key elections for Arizona's "fourth branch of government" have Democrats excited
Leading Off
AZ Corporation Commission
After renewable energy supporters won an election to take charge of a major electrical utility company in Phoenix for the first time ever this week, Arizona Democrats are newly enthused about a pair of races this fall for the body that regulates utilities across the state.
Democrats Jonathon Hill and Clara Pratte are campaigning to flip two Republican-held seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission, an entity that, due to its unusual power, has often been nicknamed the state’s “fourth branch of government.” (A huffy state Supreme Court made sure to specify in a footnote to a 2021 ruling that “our Constitution is clear that we have only three branches of government.”)
Republicans hold all five seats on the board, and, because only two of them are on the ballot this year, they aren’t in danger of losing control of the commission this cycle. A strong year for Democrats, though, would set them up for more success in 2028 when the other three seats will go before voters.
Incumbents Nick Myer and Kevin Thompson, however, can’t focus on the general election yet. State Reps. Ralph Heap and David Marshall, who are both allied with the state’s branch of the far-right Freedom Caucus, announced last year that they would challenge Myer and Thompson in the GOP primary.
The four Republicans will compete on one statewide ballot on July 21, and voters can vote for up to two options. The two contenders with the most votes will advance to the November general election, making it possible that any mixed-and-matched pair will move forward.
Hill and Pratte, by contrast, have the Democratic side to themselves, so they’re guaranteed to proceed to the general election. In that race, voters will again be allowed to vote for up to two candidates, and the top two will earn seats on the commission.
The two Democrats, who are campaigning as a ticket, argue they can make a difference on the commission even with Republicans still in control.
“I think without having any sort of opposition voice on the commission, they’ve just started becoming in an echo chamber,” Hill, a former NASA scientist who unsuccessfully ran for the body in 2024, told KJZZ last year.
Pratte, a member of the Navajo Nation who chairs the Democratic National Committee’s Native American Caucus, also says she’d bring a perspective that the current members lack.
“I grew up without electricity or water,” she told the station. “So you know, the need to invest in our rural communities has been a lifelong passion for me.”
Pratte specifically faulted the commission for scrapping a mandate that required utilities to get at least 15% of their energy from renewable resources, saying, “We should be leading the country when it comes to renewable mandates, because we have abundant wind and we have abundant sun, and we know that they are reliable and affordable.”
Heap and Marshall also believe the commission needs to change, though for very different reasons.
The two lawmakers launched their campaigns after both the Freedom Caucus and the Arizona-based Turning Point USA attacked the commission for not doing enough to advance Donald Trump’s pro-coal agenda. They specifically attacked the body for not stepping in to prevent the closure of the Cholla Power Plant, a coal facility in the northern part of the state.
Marshall, whose House district includes the now-decommissioned plant, was the lead signatory on a letter from several GOP lawmakers calling for the federal government to reopen Cholla. (Heap did not sign it.) Trump himself called for Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to “save” Cholla a few days later, but the facility remains shuttered.
Thompson has defended the closure. While touting his support for “Trump’s Energy-Dominance Agenda,” he insisted in a statement last year that “certain elected officials” were “promot[ing] financially reckless solutions” that would cost ratepayers nearly $2 billion.
Thompson and Myer have also blasted their primary opponents as “special interest proxies who have been recruited to return politics into ratemaking.” Myer told the Arizona Republic that he believed Turning Point USA and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, another prominent conservative organization, wanted the challengers to win because they would be “good puppets.”
While neither Turning Point nor the Free Enterprise Club has endorsed Heap or Marshall, both organizations made their antipathy for the incumbents known back in June.
A Turning Point spokesperson responded to Myer’s comments by telling the Republic, “We have no idea what the commissioner means by ‘puppet,’ as we have had zero contact with any current commissioners since they have taken office.” The president of the Free Enterprise Club, meanwhile, countered that Myer and Thompson’s charges were “pretty on brand.”
“They always resort to attacks and attacking whoever they can to avoid having to address the substance of what’s being brought to them,” Scot Mussi told the paper.
Campaigns for bodies like the Corporation Commission have long been low-profile affairs, but they’ve drawn considerably more interest in recent years as energy rates have skyrocketed and voters have grown increasingly concerned with the spread of resource-hungry data centers—and not just in Arizona.
In Georgia, Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson scored landslide victories last year in special elections for their state’s Public Service Commission, and Democrats now have the opportunity to flip the third seat they need to win control of the body this fall.
While those contests attracted outsized attention in part because they represented a major breakthrough for Peach State Democrats, the issues the candidates ran on also drew notice far outside Georgia.
Hubbard told Wired that when he spoke to voters, “The number one issue was affordability. But a very close second was data centers and the concern around them just sucking up the water, the electricity, the land—and not really paying any taxes.”
The impact of data centers on the cost of living was also a key issue in last week’s election for the board of the Salt River Project, Arizona’s largest public utility.
The unusual—and typically obscure—contest, which was open only to property owners, this time drew national attention. The New York Times, in a story published nearly a month before Election Day, highlighted the role Turning Point was playing in an effort to defeat a slate of candidates who supported clean energy.
One prominent Republican in the Phoenix area, though, was not at all happy with the results of Turning Point’s intervention.
“Complete botch job by Turning Point Action, losing majority of SRP board seats to leftists,” Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin tweeted Wednesday night after the winners were announced.
Hill and Pratte, meanwhile, saw promise in the outcome of the Salt River elections, in which proponents of renewable energy won an 8-6 majority on the utility’s governing board.
“Arizona voters are clearly frustrated with high utility bills and the red carpet being rolled out for data centers,” they said in a joint statement. “They’re ready for change - both now and what we’ll bring to the Corporation Commission.”
The two Democrats, though, warned that Turning Point still posed a threat to their campaigns—though one that could be overcome.
“[O]utside interests led by Turning Point still poured massive amounts of money into the SRP Board race and several of their hand-picked candidates were elected,” they said. “Massive amounts of money can still influence our elections. But, even with our limited resources, we can beat them.”
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Senate
ME-Sen
Maine Gov. Janet Mills is in the unhappy position of having to deny rumors that she might abandon her bid for the Senate after her campaign went dark on the airwaves following a month-long spending blitz.
After spending $1 million since the start of March on ads attacking her opponent in the June Democratic primary, oyster farmer Graham Platner, Mills has virtually stopped advertising on TV, the Bangor Daily News reported this week. Platner, by contrast, spent nearly $3 million during the same timeframe and is continuing to run ads.
The Portland Press Herald in turn observed that “[s]peculation online” about Mills possibly quitting the race had “mounted this week,” though it noted that such chatter was “fueled primarily by supporters of her competitor.”
In response, Mills’ campaign released a statement saying she wasn’t going anywhere.
“As the only Democrat elected statewide in Maine in the past 20 years, Janet Mills knows how to win tough battles and deliver results — and that’s why she’s the best candidate to beat Susan Collins in November and is running full steam ahead to defeat her,” it read.
Recent polls of the race have all shown Platner leading, sometimes by very large margins. In a memo to donors first shared by Axios, Platner’s campaign argued that he’d already all but won the primary and was “shifting gears and going full steam ahead into the general.”
House
NM-02
Former DEA contractor Jose Orozco has dropped his bid for the GOP nomination in New Mexico’s potentially competitive 2nd Congressional District and endorsed Marine veteran Greg Cunningham, who is now the only Republican seeking to take on Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez.
NY-17
Tech company CEO Peter Chatzky, who put at least $5 million of his own money into his campaign for Congress, announced on Thursday that he was dropping out of the Democratic primary for New York’s competitive 17th District.
Chatzky, one of half a dozen notable candidates seeking to take on Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, blamed the Democratic “establishment” for his exit, saying, “I’ve seen time and time again the machinery of the Democratic party place their heavy weight on the scale of this election.”
“Were I to continue my campaign,” he went on, “the party establishment and my competitors would need to spend significant effort and money to defeat me, resources that would be better used to defeat Mike Lawler.”
He did not endorse any of his now-former rivals, who include Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson, former National Security Council official Cait Conley, Tarrytown Trustee Effie Phillips-Staley, Air Force veteran John Cappello, and attorney Mike Sacks.
Legislatures
IN State Senate
Donald Trump expanded his crusade to punish Republican state senators who scuttled his plans to re-gerrymander Indiana’s congressional districts on Tuesday when he endorsed two more primary challengers.
Trump took to Truth Social to bash incumbents Linda Rogers and Dan Dernulc and back their respective opponents, Brian Schmutzler and Trevor De Vries. MAGA’s master previously endorsed five other Republicans who are challenging Indiana senators for renomination on May 5.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle notes that Trump has now come out against seven of the eight GOP senators seeking reelection this year after opposing him on redistricting. Trump, however, has not yet weighed in on the primary between state Sen. Rick Niemeyer, who also voted “no” on redistricting, and his opponent, conservative activist Jay Starkey.
Trump’s allies are devoting millions of dollars to ousting the dissidents, though their interests don’t always completely align with his. While U.S. Sen. Jim Banks called for state Sen. Liz Brown to “be primaried” last June after she used her influence to kill an anti-immigration bill, Brown’s support for the failed gerrymandering plan earned her Trump’s “complete and total endorsement” last month.
1Q Fundraising
NE-Sen: Dan Osborn (I): $1.25 million raised, $930,000 cash on hand
NJ-08: Mussab Ali (D): $183,000 raised
NY-17: Mike Lawler (R-inc): $1.5 million raised, $4.2 million cash on hand
NY-22: Kailee Buller (R): $200,000 raised (in four weeks)
VA-07/VA-01: Eugene Vindman (D-inc): $2.6 million raised, $5.2 million cash on hand
Vindman represents the 7th District but says he would run in the proposed 1st District if voters approve an amendment to allow a new congressional map.
Just to clarify on Phoenix's electric company, they have two, Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project. In the metropolitan area, SRP services about 40% of customers, is self governed, and tends to have lower electricity rates. SRP and APS split most of the cities including Phoenix.
The corporation commission controls rate setting by APS and Southwest Gas (which used to be APS owned), but not SRP.
The larger, older cities run their own water departments, but many newer and outlying areas have private, expensive water service.
AI and data center price fueled inflation, along with the Trump Administration raising prices by forcing coal plants to stay online (with the excuse being the energy needed by said data centers) has finally awoken the electorate to the importance of utility commission elections, particularly in purple and red states. People are sick of helping to pay for big tech's rent seeking for the purpose of more AI slop.