The two Republicans seeking re-election to the Arizona Corporation Commission are running on a platform of “promises made, promises kept,” saying they’ve fought to implement conservative policies at the agency that regulates most of the state’s utilities.
But they’re facing a challenge from the far right by critics, bolstered by President Donald Trump, who claim they haven’t done enough to keep coal power plants running in Arizona.
Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has tried to boost the nation’s coal industry by issuing executive orders and making public calls to reopen shuttered coal plants.
“To that end, I’m also instructing Secretary (of Energy Chris) Wright to save the Cholla coal plant in Arizona, which has been slated for destruction,” Trump said last spring. “We’re going to keep those coal miners on the job.”
He made those comments after Arizona Public Service shut down the Cholla plant in Navajo County, because it could no longer meet emissions standards put in place under former President Barack Obama that were designed to reduce emissions and pollution produced by the facility.
Trump’s comments resonated with hardcore Republican voters, even though coal now makes up a relatively small chunk of Arizona’s energy portfolio, which is dominated by natural gas and nuclear power.
“Most people have come up to me about the Cholla project,” Jan Shank, vice president of Sun City Grand Republican Club, told KJZZ after a debate hosted by the group in May.
“That’s driven everybody crazy, because they don’t understand why it was closed and why we can’t bring it back,” Shank said. “And the other side says we can’t spend all of this money.”
‘The math don’t math’
Commissioners Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers, who are both seeking re-election, say that reopening Cholla as a coal plant doesn’t make financial sense, an argument they made directly to White House officials following Trump’s comments.
APS estimated it would have cost nearly $2 billion to bring Cholla into compliance with federal pollution rules.
“We talked to the White House and said, unless you have some type of grant funding or some dollars that you can send to Arizona to help offset our cost, I can't, as a commission we can't, put $1.9 billion on the backs of 1.4 million ratepayers for APS,” Thompson, a former gas industry lobbyist, said. “The math don’t math.”
Thompson said the White House agreed with that logic, even though Trump never publicly acknowledged it.
“I think things would have went a lot better if the administration would have talked to the state regulators, or even to the utilities, and said, ‘Hey, where are you at with your coal plants across Arizona, or what's going on with your generation across Arizona?’ before you just make a blatant remark about keeping coal plants open that have closed,” he said.
APS announced this month it will instead turn Cholla into a natural gas plant, a proposal Thompson and Myers told KJZZ they were discussing with the utility back in May.
That plan is supported by close Trump allies, including Congressman Eli Crane, who represents the district, and Congressman Andy Biggs, who is running for governor.
“This is great news for rural Arizona and our electric grid,” Biggs wrote on social media.
But the president's public position on Cholla is already a central part of Republican state lawmaker Ralph Heap’s campaign as he seeks to oust Thompson or Myers in the GOP primary.
“Coal gives us the base load power that we need,” Heap said last year when he launched his campaign alongside former lawmaker David Marshall, who has since dropped out of the Corporation Commission race to become the Navajo County recorder.
“And so I think it is a major deal to close down a coal plant when you don't really have anything in position to make up for the energy that's going to be lost,” Heap said.
In reality, Arizona has never been less reliant on coal.
Coal made up less than 10% of the state’s overall power generation in 2024, down from nearly 40% a decade prior, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But that hasn’t stopped Heap from trying to blame Thompson and Myers for coal’s decline.
Since entering the race with backing from far-right groups like the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Turning Point Action, he’s accused them of buying into the “Green New Deal,” shorthand for pro-renewable energy policies mostly backed by Democrats.
“Our utilities are going down with the Green New Deal. From 2020 to now, they've steadily gone down this road,” Heap said at the May debate in Sun City.
Solar and battery storage accounted for over 90% of new energy capacity nationwide in the first quarter of 2026, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. That comes as financial firm Lazard found that unsubsidized utility-scale solar and offshore wind have provided the most affordable energy over the past 10 years.
But Heap claims those alleged ties to the Green New Deal are leading to higher energy costs in Arizona, where the state’s major utilities are seeking double-digit rate hikes for the second time in the past few years.
“What do they pay for utilities in Europe? They pay triple what we pay,” Heap said at the Sun City debate. “Why? Because they're totally done — the Green New Deal. Your rates are going up. Why? Because we're going down that same road.”
Myers and Thompson, who have both served as commission chair over the past four years, say that criticism isn’t based in reality, citing their voting record.
“When you don't have something to run on and you don't have successes to run on, then you make stuff up to make your opponent look bad,” Thompson said.
They point to their efforts to repeal renewable energy requirements and energy efficiency rules for the state’s utilities, which they argue saddle customers with unjust costs and surcharges — votes some of their critics say undermine common-sense solutions that help combat climate change while actually saving ratepayers money.
All of the above
Myers and Thompson have long said they support an “all of the above” approach to meeting Arizona’s energy needs, which continue to grow alongside the state’s population and booming data center industry.
That means backing a diverse energy portfolio that includes gas, nuclear and renewables like solar.
Their critics on the left, however, call that lip service, saying under Thompson and Myers leadership the all-Republican commission continues to undermine efforts to boost renewables while championing projects like Cholla and a new $5 billion pipeline to deliver gas from Texas.
“It’s hilarious that on one side of the political aisle we are accused of being anti-solar and anti-renewable, right?” Myers said. “On the other side, we're being accused of being pro solar and pro renewable.”
The incumbents’ messaging is resonating with some Republicans.
“They were making an effort to ferret out the excesses and do away with them, so they were very diligent about that and I support them,” said Mesa resident James Reading, who heard Myers and Thompson speak at a local Republican party meeting.
Ultimately, it will be Republican voters like Reading and Shank in Sun City who decide which two Republicans to send to the general election.
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