Glenn Way is the CEO of Charter One LLC, the management company overseeing one of the largest charter school networks in the state. Now his political action committee is facing a criminal investigation, accused of violating campaign finance law by funneling corporate money to Republican legislative candidates.
Way founded the first American Leadership Academy charter school in 2009 and has expanded the company today to 27 campuses across the state with more in other parts of the country. The Arizona Attorney General’s Office is now investigating his PAC, dubbed the Educational Freedom Fund, according to reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy.
MacDonald-Evoy broke the story for the Arizona Mirror and joined The Show to talk about it.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Jerod.
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so tell us more about this complaint and who filed it. It was filed on behalf of a former teacher, it sounds like?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Yeah. The complaint, which was filed in January 2025, was filed by a law firm that’s kind of connected to Democratic causes. And it was filed on behalf of a former schoolteacher who also has worked for the Arizona Education Association, which is one of the state’s largest teachers unions.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. And what does it allege?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: So it alleges that ... that this PAC, the Educational Freedom PAC, donated around $83,000 in direct contributions to candidates. And this money was funneled through Charter One LLC. And in Arizona, corporate entities are banned from giving money directly to candidates, whether that is directly or through routing through a PAC. And so that would be a violation of Arizona’s campaign finance law, which would be a Class 2 misdemeanor. And the complaint alleges that this PAC was used to facilitate those types of donations.
LAUREN GILGER: That’s quite a bit of money. This, you say, is not the way that campaign finance law works in Arizona. Was there a way to do this legally, Jerod? Like, can you funnel money to candidates not through a corporate entity?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Well, corporate money in elections is generally mainly used for things like IEs, independent expenditures, ads, things like that. Corporate money is generally not allowed to be given to candidates at all, either in federal or state election law.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. You got records on this related to the investigation. What does the Attorney General’s Office have to say here?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: The Attorney General’s Office has kind of declined to comment on this, citing that it is an ongoing investigation.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. ... You mentioned the amount of money here, but tell us about the PAC itself. And have they had anything to say for themselves? Have they responded to this complaint?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Yeah, the attorneys representing the PAC have actually responded. They first responded to the Secretary of State’s Office, who was the entity that did refer this to the Attorney General’s Office. And they said that during that cycle, 2022 to 2024, the former treasurer, who is Youssef Khalaf, was responsible for kind of the compliance of this PAC and, inadvertently, as they said, authorized the PAC to contribute to candidates using funds that it got from Charter One, which is what would trigger the issue with the law.
He’s been let go as the treasurer, and they hired a different compliance agent — or compliance company, and they’ve been kind of going through and auditing their the PAC, they said, in their response to the Secretary of State, and are working to kind of correct the filings that are online to kind of be compliant with that.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. They are also kind of arguing that this wasn’t illegal. How do they make that argument?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Yeah, they say that Charter One is what’s called a disregarded entity for tax purposes. And that basically, to them, since it’s a sole individual who contributes to this LLC, and it’s not a corporate LLC, it’s a personal kind of account, that that does not trigger the law.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. There is a long list of candidates, Jerod, who this PAC donated to. Can you tell us who’s on that list?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Yeah, it gave around $1,000 to a large number of candidates. I believe it’s around 20 in total. You have people like — they’re all people who are within the Arizona state Legislature. People in leadership positions like Ben Toma or Teresa Martinez. It also gave to kind of some high-known kind of education freedom advocate-type people like Matt Gress, who’s been big on supporting charter schools and the ESA program. You have people like T.J. Shope and Sine Kerr and Janae Shamp and Warren Petersen — a lot of kind of the who’s who of the Republican leadership in the Legislature.
LAUREN GILGER: Have any of those candidates had anything to say about this money, this PAC?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: As far as I’m aware, no.
LAUREN GILGER: So let’s just look at the situation here, right? Like if you’re looking at a complaint filed on behalf of this former teacher who has connections to the Arizona Education Association, the teachers union and a PAC funded by this big charter school company, the person who owns it, and going to a lot of these pro-school choice candidates. I mean, is this sort of a proxy war?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: It could be seen as that. I mean, the union has their own PAC, which makes a lot of donations as well through their own different means and ways to candidates or in support of candidates. And then you have this association that’s doing it as well. This is one of the biggest issues within Arizona politics, which is what they call “educational freedom.” And this is going to become and continue to be kind of a big area where we’re going to have proxy wars with money in regards to politics.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Jerod, what’s next in this process?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: The attorney general will continue to review the complaint and decide if they will bring charges or not on this. And we will have to see what happens.
LAUREN GILGER: No timeline on that yet?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Not that I’m aware, no.
LAUREN GILGER: But cases like this have been pushed forward in the past, right?
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Correct. There were two individuals in Kingman, Arizona, in 2021 that were prosecuted on this by former Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who had made similar kind of donations through a corporate entity to politicians.
LAUREN GILGER: Interesting stuff. All right, Jerod MacDonald-Evoy with the Arizona Mirror joining us. Jerod, thanks as always. Appreciate it.
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: No problem. Thank you.
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