Clean-energy slate loses narrow control of SRP board, following new appointment

A clean-energy slate narrowly won control of SRP’s district board in April. They just lost it.

Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin was sworn in to fill a vacancy on SRP’s governing boards on Thursday.

He replaces Nick Brown, a solar advocate and a part of the clean-energy slate that claimed victory in April’s election.

With Brown, the clean-energy team held an 8-6 majority on the SRP district board. Those candidates beat out several others who were backed by Turning Point USA’s political arm in a surprisingly high-turnout election.

But Brown resigned last month, telling the Arizona Republic it’s time to slow down and spend more time with his family.

Galvin was tapped to replace him.

‘I’m not part of any slate’

Wayne Schutsky

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KJZZ

Galvin is certainly not a Turning Point endorsee, but he’s not on the clean-energy team either.

He took a swipe at both Turning Point and the clean-energy slate following the April election.

“Complete botch job by Turning Point Action, losing majority of SRP board seats to leftists. This follows TP defeats in PA & WI Supreme Ct races. TP Action, wasting donor money, went to desperate move on ballot harvesting. Losing statewide races & now SRP board seats. Incompetents,” Galvin posted on X.

With him on the district board, the membership is split 7-7 with clean-energy team members and others.

“I’m not a part of any slate,” Galvin said.

Two of the board members, Paul Rovey and Mark Pace, were supported by Turning Point. As are board president Christopher Dobson and Vice President Barry Pacely.

SRP is governed by a 14-member Board of Directors and a 30-member council.

The seven board members who aren’t a part of the clean-energy board, including Galvin, are not committed to the same pro-renewable energy agenda.

What does the clean-energy slate want?

Clean-energy board member Ken Clark said the ideological differences have a lot to do with affordability and the cost of data centers in particular.

“Clean energy is now the cheapest form of energy in the world. … Over the last seven, 10 years, you have data centers coming in and just forcing all of these utilities across the whole country to scramble and add more gas firming power when we could be asking data centers to carry more of their own weight,” Clark said.

Galvin said he’s open-minded about various energy projects.

“I would say it’s really good to have an energy mix of uses,” Galvin said. “I am supportive of solar, natural gas — renewables, I should say, not just solar — and nuclear. And obviously there’s some other technologies that people think are around the corner but let’s wait and see on those.”

Galvin said he doesn’t want to approach his role on the SRP board with an ideological bent.

“You are overseeing a utility, which means it's very important to make sure that the company is running well but also most importantly that you're looking out for ratepayers in terms of affordability,” he said.

‘It felt very engineered’

Clark said Galvin’s appointment to replace Brown “felt very engineered.”

The SRP district council ultimately voted on Brown’s replacement.

Councilmember Eric Gorsegner was the clean-energy team’s preferred candidate, but Galvin won the seat 15-13.

SRP put guidelines in place in 2012 noting that typically a councilmember from the same area as the vacancy would be recommended to fill the position.

Gorsegner and Brown are both from the same SRP district, and Galvin was not a sitting senior councilmember.

“This was SRP District 7, and the members of District 7 said, ‘we want Eric Gorsegner to move up to the board,' and in fact that precedent was used just a couple months ago for a vacancy replacement on the council, but when it was not convenient, that precedent, those guidelines that were created in 2012, were just ignored. Because it’s about power,” Clark said.

Full conversation on The Show

MARK BRODIE: ... This spring, lots of politicos were focused on a race that didn’t often attract much focus: the SRP board. That’s because Turning Point was supporting a slate of candidates running against a so-called clean-energy team. The clean-energy candidates won a majority, but that is not, as it turns out, the end of the story. With more now to explain is KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez from the Politics Desk. Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So, why are we still talking about this?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: We’re still talking about this because the clean-energy team did narrowly win that majority and then they just recently lost it because one of their guys decided to retire.

MARK BRODIE: And who is this person, and do we have a sense of why he decided to retire?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, his name is Nick Brown and he’d been on the board for a while, but he told the Republic it’s time for him to spend time with his family. So he quit shortly after winning reelection and subsequently, they replaced him with someone who is not on the clean-energy team, which means they don’t have a majority of 8-6. Now, it’s a 7-7 split.

MARK BRODIE: All right, so let’s talk about the replacement. This is somebody well-known to people in political circles, somebody who has another elected position.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It is. It’s the big name, Tom Galvin. And he’s on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and he’s going to keep that seat and do both of these jobs at the same time. He told me he doesn’t plan to retire. Galvin is a Republican. He’s not in the Turning Point group. In fact, he’s a bit of an enemy of Turning Point USA. But he’s also certainly not in the clean-energy team, so he’s one of these miscellaneous people.

MARK BRODIE: And the people who are left on the board, are they — they’re not all Turning Point folks, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Correct. So, of those seven folks who are not on the clean-energy team, there’s a couple of them who are Turning Point-backed or endorsed candidates, and then there’s a few other folks who are just, you know, there.

MARK BRODIE: Kind of like Tom Galvin, who’s not Turning Point, not clean energy, somewhere in the middle.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I suppose so, yeah. SRP operates strangely because they’ve got this big 30-member council and then they’ve got this smaller 14-member board, and then the president and vice president is separate, and then from them they’ve got these other, you know, groups that govern separately energy and water.

MARK BRODIE: OK. Why was Tom Galvin appointed to fill this spot? Is that the way that these things typically happen?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes and no. So, there is a bit of a precedent that if someone steps down from the board, that someone from the council who’s in their area, if they’re interested in stepping up, ascending to that seat, would basically have the option to do that.

MARK BRODIE: From the 30 — the larger council, to move up to the smaller board.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Right. And so, them going outside of the council and picking Galvin, who hadn’t been sitting on the council, was something that the clean-energy folks are not happy about and they said was unusual. And I talked to Ken Clark, who’s on the clean-energy team and is part of the council, and he said it felt engineered to him because there was a guy, Eric Goetsenberger, who did want that seat and did want to ascend and take Nick Brown’s place, and that would have kept their majority, but they bypassed that to go for Galvin instead.

MARK BRODIE: Do we know why that happened?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, I mean, the board, the full council got to vote on this and it was a narrow vote for Galvin, so I would suspect it’s because the non-clean-energy folks didn’t want them to have that majority and keep that majority, so they went and found someone who isn’t part of it.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, what does this mean for policy? I mean, we’ve talked about Turning Point. This obviously seems like not terrible for them.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s good for them. So, Turning Point had put a lot of money and effort into this SRP election, which typically kind of flies under the radar, and had much greater turnout this year than usual, which drew our attention and drew eyebrows. But Turning Point didn’t succeed in getting that majority on the board, but they did succeed in getting the president and vice president seat. So, that really comes into play if there is a tie. And now that we’ve got this 7-7 clean-energy, non-clean energy split, it could be that the power of that vice president seat and president seat just went way up, which is great for Turning Point.

MARK BRODIE: And what does that mean for the kinds of things that they’ll be voting on? Like, the kinds of ties, for example, the Turning Point-aligned president and vice president might be voting on?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, I think one thing to really look at probably going forward is going to be data centers, because the clean-energy team is saying they want more renewable energy sources. They want to push for solar, they want to push for batteries. And they also are not in favor of building a bunch more data centers. They don’t like the idea of data centers using up energy. They want them to provide their own or just not come here at all, essentially. And so, I think that’s going to be one of the main differences is when it comes to those big, big data centers, are they going to vote one way or another with this board?

MARK BRODIE: Do we have a sense of where new board member Galvin stands on this?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I asked him about that, and he said he’s open to everything. He says he’s open to renewable sources, solar, nuclear, whatever. But he considers himself to be a pro-business person. He said he’ll do whatever is best for the ratepayers. And so, for me, that was a little bit vague. I mean, that could be a lot of things. I think Galvin, you know, certainly has established himself as kind of a old-school conservative and very much a pro-business guy, so we’ll see what that means in the future.

MARK BRODIE: OK. That is KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez from the Politics Desk. Camryn, thank you.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.