Turning Point is spending big on the SRP board election. Here's what they get out of it

There’s already a lot of attention being paid to July’s primaries in Arizona and November’s midterm elections around the country. But a major political group is helping to raise attention on what is typically a lower-profile contest before all of that.

Early voting for the Salt River Project board election begins on March 11; April 7 is election day. And you may have seen signs around the Valley for a slate of candidates supported by Turning Point USA, which is heavily involved in this election.

Jeremy Duda of Axios Phoenix joined The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation

JEREMY DUDA: Well, there are two boards. There is the district board and the association board. The district side is energy policy for the most part. They set the rates, decide the energy policy. The association is the water side and also very important.

But when people are looking at the decisions that these boards are making, for the most part the one that’s getting the attention is the energy side because that’s who sets your rates, that’s who’s deciding policies about stuff like renewables.

So that’s what’s going to get, I think for most folks, the most tension.

MARK BRODIE: And that’s in large part because SRP — unlike APS and Tucson Electric Power — is not regulated by the [Arizona] Corporation Commission. They have their own independent board.

DUDA: Right. It’s a public-private entity that predates statehood. So it has this very unique governance structure where it’s public elections. They select the board based on landowners in SRP territory.

For most of the seats, your vote is based on acreage. The more acres you own, the more votes you have.

And then there’s some at-large seats that are just each landowner gets a vote. But most of the seats, the districts are decided by acreage based voting.

BRODIE: All right, so why is this particular election getting so much attention? I mean past SRP board elections have been pretty under the radar affairs.

DUDA: For the most part, yeah. I think a couple years ago you had the elections get more attention. You had a clean energy team very publicly and aggressively campaigning, led by some prominent Democrats. A lot of those same folks doing the same thing this year.

This year, I think probably the reason it’s getting more attention than normal is you have involvement of the political arm of Turning Point, the conservative activist group gets involved in a lot of elections, backing very MAGA-aligned, supporting like-minded candidates.

So they’ve gone all-in for the SRP election this year. They’re registering voters for SRP elections. You have to register separately from other voting. So they’re registering voters, they’re knocking doors, stuff like that.

You get signs all over town. I think most people, if you’re aware that this election is coming up, it’s because you’ve seen Turning Point’s signs on intersections all over the metro area.

BRODIE: So what is Turning Point’s interest in this race? This is, as we’ve talked about, kind of a “downballot,” under-the-radar kind of race. Why has Turning Point decided to get so involved here?

DUDA: Well, a couple of things. One is if you ask them, they’ll tell you they’re very interested in the policy. They want to stop Green New Deal type policies that a lot of conservatives feel unnecessarily raise energy rates.

The other side of it is it’s an organizing opportunity. And the way they put it to me a few months ago, the first time I did some reporting on this, is it’s an opportunity to kind of help get organized, flex that organizing muscle for future elections, particularly ahead of 2028, the next presidential election.

Political groups are always looking ahead. So it’s a chance to register voters, to work on that organizing infrastructure and get more of that in place. And this is a race where I think that kind of organizing really can have an impact. If you’re involved in the governor’s race, for example — which Turning Point will be, they’re very emphatically backing (U.S. Rep.) Andy Biggs in the primary.

There’s only so much you can do in a statewide race with door knocking, stuff like that. In a race like SRP where you have low turnout, relatively small number of voters, that’s a place where you can flex that organizing muscle and really make a difference.

BRODIE: So in a sense, not entirely, but it sounds like in a sense, this election is kind of a means to an end for Turning Point in the sense of building up their database, meeting voters, getting them registered to vote and then they can maybe use that information, talk to those voters later on for other, maybe more high profile races?

DUDA: In part, at least if you talk to them, they’ll tell you it’s a little from column A, a little from column B. They’ll tell you they’re very interested in the actual policy. But it does definitely seem like this is, I should put it, a means to an end, something where they can kind of build out that organization for future elections.

BRODIE: Do we have a sense of what kinds of policies the Turning Point-backed candidates are looking to enact for SRP?

DUDA: I think the policies here, this isn’t something where you see, kind of like a MAGA-traditional conservative split. Anyone who’s followed utility policy here or anywhere else has seen these debates year in, year out for a long time, where folks on the left, Democrats are pushing renewable energy policies very aggressively.

Folks on the right, maybe they support some of those as well, but say, “Hey, our primary goal is sustainability and affordability. If that includes renewables, we’re for that.” But you want to focus mostly on affordability, wherever that energy is coming from. And that’s really what you’re seeing here, that very traditional split.

You have two groups on the right, actually that are backing this more conservative slate: Turning Point Action, as we talked about, and plus a group called Arizonans for Responsible Growth, which is more traditional, business-backed conservative.

Groups like that and groups like Turning Point, in a lot of Republican primaries, for example, you see them often at odds. In this case, they’re on the same side. They’re not working together, but they’re both backing the same slate of candidates against the liberal clean energy team.

BRODIE: What does the money race look like in this? Obviously, Turning Point, often at least the conventional wisdom is those candidates come with a good amount of financial backing.

DUDA: Sure. And I have not seen the campaign finance reports on that yet. I think it’ll be a while before we see most of the money being spent in this. But Turning Point obviously has a lot of volunteers, a lot of infrastructure in place.

Arizonans for Responsible Growth, the head of that group tells me they expect to spend over half a million dollars in this. And this is a group that’s very dedicated specifically to energy and utility issues. They expect to play pretty heavily in Corporation Commission races later this year as well. So this is kind of the whole enchilada for them, this utility policy.

BRODIE: Yeah. What are folks in the utility world saying about this, people who, you know, watch utility rates and, you know, are sort of in the know with how they operate and how their boards operate?

Are they surprised that this race is getting this much attention and this big national group — Arizona-based but national group — coming in and playing in this race?

DUDA: I think for a lot of folks, people are kind of looking at it and saying, “Oh, why is a group like Turning Point getting involved in this?” So that’s a little bit more unusual compared to how these races have usually played out. I think we usually see more like this clean energy team on the left, this business-backed group on the right.

That’s more the kind of traditional campaign you’d see in a race like this. So, yeah, I think the Turning Point’s involvement is definitely raising some eyebrows. But as we discussed, kind of makes a lot of sense in terms of them having kind of multiple goals here.