A free pass on fines

Deadlines and dollar signs … Stop the (political) invasion … And an art heist in reverse.

Some of the most important information about a candidate comes from identifying the people who give them money.

But voters can only do that if candidates submit reports with that information.

Arizona’s campaign finance law requires politicians to file campaign finance reports detailing who’s given them money and how they’ve spent it, about every quarter of the year. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office hosts those reports on its “See the Money” website.

Missing those deadlines results in a $10 fine per day, per report for the first 15 days, then $25 per day after that.

But that doesn't stop candidates from missing deadlines, and it certainly hasn’t for the 42 state legislative candidates we found filed late reports this year.

There’s virtually no enforcement mechanism to force the hands of PACs, candidate committees and lobbyists that legally have to file campaign finance reports. They accrue late fees like an overdue library book — and, like library fees, some of the biggest bills are never paid in full.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, knows politicians are more likely to pay their late library book fees than their late campaign finance report fees.

Former Democratic Rep. César Chávez dodged $61,000 in fines for filing late reports in 2022, for example. The Secretary of State's Office, led by Gov. Katie Hobbs at the time, let him off the hook for $1,000.

To force a candidate to pay the late fees, Arizona’s Secretary of State needs a court order, and likely an external complaint for the Attorney General to take action, per spokesperson JP Martin.

Martin said Secretary of State Adrian Fontes tried to work with Republican legislative leadership earlier this year to give the campaign finance laws an enforcement mechanism it currently lacks. But politicians aren’t interested in strengthening campaign finance laws, especially in an election year.

And finding the exact amount a candidate owes is no easy feat. If you look up state Senate candidate Vince Leach’s campaign finances, for example, you’ll find two committees reporting the finances behind his campaign.

One shows that Leach has filed every single campaign finance report dating back to 2017 on time. The other says he owes $7,605 in late fees — for filing four reports a collective 339 days late.

Leach’s political consultant Chris Baker said the second committee has never been an active account, and the campaign is trying to get it shut down.

Leach’s ghost committee is just one example of thousands in fines being racked up for inactive committees, or for candidates’ past election runs. When a candidate has been in state office a long time, or has more than one committee reporting its finances, it’s hard to tell what they really owe.

But to get a bigger picture of what all the legislative candidates’ late fees look like, we looked at all their campaign finance reports for 2024.

We only included active candidate committees with late fees accrued in 2024. Some candidates have a lot of late fees outstanding from years past, like Rep. Consuelo Hernandez, who still owes $16,175 from late reports in 2022 and 2023.

In total, we found $6,565 in fines owed and another $3,730 in fines paid off among 42 legislative candidates¹ this year.

The top five candidates who racked up the most late fees were:

• Rep. Mae Peshlakai (D) - LD6 House: $1,600

• Rep. Lydia Hernandez (D) - LD24 House: $1,235

• Sen. Jake Hoffman (R) - LD15 Senate: $975

• Skyla Edwards (R) - LD26 House: $930

• Monica Timberlake (D) - LD30 House: $870

Other fun facts:

• Republican LD26 candidate Frank Roberts had the most late reports filed at six, and had $655 in unpaid fines and $110 in paid ones.

• Every single LD26 House candidate filed late reports, but Skyla Edwards had the most fines at $930.

• 16 of the late filers were incumbent lawmakers.

• And last, but not least, being late on campaign finance reporting is bipartisan. Of the 42 late filers we found, they were split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

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Shape Arizona's future! Vote in the State General Election and make your voice a part of our democracy!

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Flyinto state: Vice Presidential hopeful JD Vance campaigned in Arizona, stopping by a gun shop in Peoria and then heading to Tucson, where he promised to send the military to fight the drug cartels on the border, among other pledges. Today, Bill Clinton is in Phoenix to stump for Kamala Harris, while Donald Trump Jr. is visiting Queen Creek to campaign for his dad. Tomorrow, both Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are campaigning in the Valley. Biden will also speak to the Gila River Indian Community on Friday. Saturday, VP candidate Tim Walz will be in Arizona, though it’s not clear where. And U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly has been flying himself around the state in a rented airplane, making stops to stump for Harris in Sierra Vista, Yuma, Tuba City, Flagstaff, Lake Havasu City and Casa Grande, per the Republic.

Suspicious times: U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake’s office went on lockdown yesterday after a campaign staffer opened an envelope with a “suspicious substance” inside of it and a note that said “caution anthrax,” Fox News reports. The FBI is investigating. Meanwhile, Phoenix Police called in the hazmat teams to investigate a suspicious substance in relation to some anti-Semitic political signs in the Ahwatukee area, though they later said there was no danger to the community.

A job’s a job: Former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain are among the Arizonans who made the New York Times speculative list of Republicans who might be open to a position in Harris’ cabinet. And former Arizonan and Trump spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham has also endorsed Harris, as Politico notes, so we’re adding her to the list.

“I’ve had no discussions in this regard,” Flake told the Times. “There are many more qualified Republicans out there.”

Writing the Agenda is a lot of work. And it never feels like a job, thanks to all of you!

But it actually is our only job and we do need to get paid so if you could click this button it would be a big help.

Tech scam: Canvassers working for Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC that claimed to knock on doors in Arizona and Nevada were easily able to spoof the GPS data on the app they used to prove they were working, further raising questions about how many doors the allegedly massive ground game actually hit, the Guardian reports after finding new details on the case.

Sanctions won’t stop him: Arizona attorney Kurt Olsen, who was a key player helping Trump attempt to overturn the 2020 election (and Lake’s election-overturning attempts two years later, for which he was sanctioned) has been chatting with the former president quite a bit lately ahead of the 2024 election, the Times reports. He was also on the phone with Trump several times during the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Survey says: Northern Arizona’s Congressional District 2 race is closer than expected, Politico reports based on polling from Noble Predictive Insights. The poll, which has a nearly 5 percentage point margin of error² puts former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez tied with freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane.

The USA is their neighborhood: While Native American voters may give Democrats the boost they need to win Arizona’s statewide races, Indigenous voters living in the city are hard for campaigns to target, the Arizona Mirror’s Shondiin Silversmith reports. Campaigns find it hard to effectively message to the key demographic outside of the reservation because they don’t live in one centralized neighborhood outside of their ancestral homelands.

“Most other groups in cities have neighborhoods that they live in, and urban natives tend to literally be all over the city,” Janeen Comenote, the executive director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, told Silversmith.

A bronze cowboy statue that was stolen from a downtown Scottsdale art gallery 40 years ago was returned to its owner after ABC15 did a profile of stolen art pieces in the FBI’s database last year, ABC15 reports.

Gilbert resident Arlin Cook inherited it from his brother-in-law, who died in 2022, and who he says probably got it in a trade.

“There were a lot of pieces in the gallery worth more than that. But they wanted that,” said Nancy Emmons, whose parents Bob and Betty Mammen, owned the gallery it was stolen from.

The feel-good story gives us hope that the bronze bust of former U.S. Sen. Carl Hayden that mysteriously vanished from the Capitol in 2021 may someday return.

1. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office can issue waivers for late fees above $1,000, so there’s no guarantee candidates actually paid that money out of pocket.

2. Remember, a 5% margin of error means each candidate could be up or down 5% from what the poll says, for a total of 10% margin of uncertainty.