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Christopher Conover: Welcome to The Buzz. I'm Christopher Conover. This week where campaigns get their money.

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When it comes to campaigns in Arizona and across the rest of the country, you need money to play the game this week, we look at where that money is coming from. Joining me in the studio are Danyelle Khmara from AZPM and our own producer, Zac Ziegler, who's sort of on this side of the glass while still on the other side of the glass. Welcome both of you.

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Danyelle Khmara: Thank you. 

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Zac Ziegler: Someone's still gotta push the buttons. 

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Christopher Conover: Well, that's exactly right, and Zac, it is, as usual, you pushing all the buttons here, but let's start out before we get into the races. Everybody thinks about when it comes to campaign finance, which are the federal races? You both spent a lot of time this week looking at the state races. Danyelle, in particular, you looked at the propositions that are on the ballot this time? 

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Danyelle Khmara: Yeah, I did. And the one that I want to talk about first is Proposition 139 which is the proposition that would codify the right to abortion. That has raised a ton of money in particular for the proposition. So I found about 27 million that was raised by the Arizona for Abortion Access PAC. And those donations, a lot of those donations came from out of state. A lot of it came from in state. So just to name a few of the big donors: the PAC Arizonans Fed Up With Failing Health Care, they donated about 4.4 million. Planned Parenthood, which was both in state and out of state, donated about 3.5 million. Actually, most of that came from out of state. A lot of that came from DC and California. Next in line was the Advocacy Action Fund, which is actually out of California. They donated $2.25 million. I also saw just a few wealthy out of state donors that I thought were kind of interesting individual donors. One was Phoebe Gates, who a lot of you may know is the daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, she donated $750,000. Michael Bloomberg, a million dollars. The Open Society Action Fund, which was founded by George Soros, donated half a million. And Kate Capshaw, who is Spielberg's wife, and she was the star of the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, donated $50,000 and then there was just a ton of donations from individuals. There was more than 26,000 donations that were $1,000 or less. As far as spending against the measure, it was far less. The pack that was raising most of that money is called It Goes Too Far. One of the largest donors to that was the Center for Arizona Policy Action, which is a non-profit organization based in Phoenix. And then there was a ton of just small donations, less than a million dollars, many wealthy philanthropist types, including just one of the names that I recognized on there was Jim Click, who donated $10,000

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Christopher Conover: And for those maybe who aren't familiar with Jim Click owns a number of local car dealerships, very politically active, usually on the Republican side of things, so not necessarily a surprise to see him on that side of it. But $10,000 is not a small amount of money. 

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Danyelle Khmara: No, it's not. I mean, I thought it was notable that he was on there, mainly because he does tend to cross the political aisle, sometimes with his donations.

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Christopher Conover: It's interesting when you were reading off some of those big names, Phoebe Gates, Kate Capshaw, Michael Bloomberg, that they're donating to Arizona's ballot measure, because this is a ballot measure or something similar that's in a number of states. So Arizona obviously getting a lot of attention nationally from people with a lot of money, obviously.

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Danyelle Khmara: Yeah, I think that probably one of the reasons why this ballot is getting so much attention in Arizona is because abortion rights got a lot of attention in Arizona recently when the Civil War era law came into effect, that the legislature has now overturned, but when that came into effect, that I feel like people really started paying attention to abortion rights in Arizona during that time, that probably has something to do with why this proposition is getting so much attention now.

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Christopher Conover: That and Arizona is now a swing state, so lots. Of attention in general.

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Danyelle Khmara: I'm sure that has plenty to do with it.

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Zac Ziegler: You only have to ask the folks in our newsroom about how much attention we are currently getting as they go out to cover all of the campaigning that's being done for presidential candidates here.

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Christopher Conover: That's exactly right. Yes,

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Zac Ziegler: I do find it interesting, like, how much big out of state money there is coming into these races. That's something I looked at and saw a lot of those names that you mentioned. I looked at probably about the top 60 out of state donors. As far as the amount of money they contributed. 43 of that top 60 were people who are from out of state. Now maybe they do have some connection. You know, you mentioned Steven Spielberg. I saw his name there. He did spend some of his childhood in Phoenix, and the theater for the Phoenix Theater Company is named after him. It was interesting to see that much big money coming from outside of the state. Of those big name donors, they accounted for about $27 million of giving. $19 million of that, $27 million came from people outside of Arizona.

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Danyelle Khmara: Wow, that's really interesting. And then, like, what was the breakdown as far as between one party or the other for Republican or Democratic?

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Zac Ziegler: There was a lot of giving to mostly Democratic causes. Of those43 out of state donors, 36 were giving towards Democratic causes. Money going to the state party, Arizona For Abortion Access, the PAC for America's Future was another one I saw a fair amount. Only a handful, four, giving to more Republican causes. Those tended to be a little more diverse. There was some money going towards It Goes Too Far, or causes like the Judicial Independence Defense PAC, and there was also some out of state money going towards a cause that is well, technically an independent one. Make Elections Fair.

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Christopher Conover: Zac, did you see besides that, open primary, Make Elections Fair issue? Any other issues where there were cross party donations,

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Zac Ziegler: Not really, This thing seemed to be rather divided, lots of money going very specifically towards causes that almost lined up, or it was a lot of giving for just a single cause. And that was something I'm sure Danyelle, you probably saw when when looking at Arizonans For Abortion Access, I'm curious though you also looked at some of the other props, 314, which is the one that deals with law enforcement at the border, 138, the tipped workers one, how are they doing as far as financial gathering on this?

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Danyelle Khmara: Yeah, And I also looked at the one that you just mentioned, which was 140 open primaries. It was interesting what you just said, because there actually is a pack in favor of that proposition that raised about ten million there was almost no money raised against it. And then the other two that you just asked me about, prop 314 which is the border security proposition. There was not a ton of funding on that. So unlike the proposition in support of abortion rights, abortion and border security have been two of the top issues during this election. So it did kind of surprise me to see how little funding there was, either for or against this border security proposition. And to be honest, going through the Arizona Secretary of State Campaign Finance website, it was hard to even figure out what was the money that was being spent on the proposition and what was being donated, because it was all just grouped together. That said, it was in the 1000s, not in the millions. And then as far as the one that would allow for tipped workers to be paid 25% less per hour than the minimum wage, the committee against that, Raise the Wage, raised $5 million and then the committee for it, all I could find was that it had raised $11,000 and I actually had to go look at Open Secrets to see that, because I couldn't really find any fundraising about that on the Secretary of State website.

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Christopher Conover: All right. Danyelle, Zac, thank you for your time looking at the state numbers. After our break, we'll talk about the federal numbers here in Arizona, races. Stay with us.

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Christopher Conover: Welcome back to The Buzz. I'm Christopher Conover. This week we're looking at donations to political campaigns. The race for the open US Senate seat in Arizona had a surprise third name make an appearance this week. The current seat holder, independent Kyrsten Sinema, announced back in March that she would not be seeking reelection. So what happens to the millions of dollars her campaign had in the bank? The campaign's most recent finance report, shows she's been spending that money on travel, including some luxury accommodations inside the US and abroad. Joining us now is Wayne Schutsky, a reporter on the KJZZ politics desk who wrote about what was in those reports. 

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Wayne Schutsky: You know, we saw the last quarter, I believe she had refunded a lot of her donations. So I actually started looking at her documents this time around to see if she was going to continue that trend, and she really didn't. I think it was about $5,000 in refunds this time around, but we saw for $100,000 spent on planes, hotels, all this kind of stuff. And we're not just talking to the United States, talking France, Tokyo, all over California, luxury hotels, you know, flights, all these kind of things.

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Christopher Conover: And we're not talking just luxury like, Oh, that's a nice hotel, the one in Japan that you mentioned, that's, that's a very, very high end, at least based on the price Hotel.

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Wayne Schutsky: Yeah, we're talking some of them were hundreds of dollars a night, you know, in the higher end, but, yeah, some of them were 1000s. This was not just one location. This was Tokyo, Paris, California. There's even a stay up at the Grand Canyon. 

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Christopher Conover: Somebody listening to this is going to ask the question that I know you reported on, is all this legal?

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Wayne Schutsky: As everything is, it's hard to say, so it is illegal to use campaign funds for personal use. The problem is, is determining whether or not, definitively, this was personal use. The campaign and Sinema's office did not respond to me, to kind of give me, I asked for a rundown. You know what? What was she doing here? But I would say it does bring up the questions. All these expenses took place after she announced she wasn't seeking re election. So to then go on and say, this is a campaign expense, that's where my question started popping up, how are you spending on a campaign you're no longer running? I spoke to some experts on this, and they said, you know, you can still spend campaign funds after you're not running for things like wrapping up the campaign. There's a lot of clerical work that kind of goes in there. You know, finishing paying your staff, all that kind of stuff. But again, not allowed for personal use. And it kind of raises a bigger issue, which is that  both in the state, local and federal level as we really just don't see a lot of enforcement when it comes to campaign finance violations or alleged violations or potential violations. So no, I can't say she's done anything wrong here, but it definitely raises some questions.

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Christopher Conover: I know one of the things that someone in office can use campaign finance money for is security, and there were in her campaign finance reports under the area of security tickets to baseball games. I guess we'll assume she went to the baseball game and had to pay for her security folks to get in.

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Wayne Schutsky: Yeah, and so, like you said, that's an allowable expense. And you know, apparently she does like to go to a lot of events, because there was several listed on there. You mentioned baseball games. There were some other ones where you can't really tell what the event was, but because it's through a ticketing company. But you know, you can imagine concerts, things of that nature that she was attending, and she had security with her along the way. Also, there were some larger expenses just for that security in general, both domestic companies and again, I think I spotted a French company on there that provides like personal security and security plans for high profile officials.

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Christopher Conover: And she's been knocked on that before previous cycles and things like that. People have questioned some of those expenses. These are not necessarily new questions for Senator Sinema.

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Wayne Schutsky: No, I mean, I believe the Arizona Republic reported on the last cycle, when all those refunds happened, that even as she was making those refunds, she was taking those trips, and, yeah, she also has had some higher than maybe expected personal security prices. They believe one of those individuals was tied to Tulsi Gabbard, the former Congresswoman. I believe it was her sister owned one of those companies. So, yeah, there was questions about, you know, what's a reasonable expense versus, you know, maybe going a little overboard,

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Christopher Conover: Right, you and I are not FEC judges or any judges, so we're not the ones to make these decisions about legal, legality of anything, 

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Wayne Schutsky: not even close 

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Christopher Conover: you mentioned there are some things that legally can be done with the money for someone who is. Not running, closing down the campaign, as you said, there's a lot of paperwork and staff that still has to be dealt with. Are there other things? Because what happens? You know, she pays all that, and there's still money in the bank.

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Wayne Schutsky: she could transfer it to other campaign, federal campaigns, you can't cross over into state campaigns, but federal campaigns, you can donate it to organizations. And actually, I believe we did see some of that in in this one as well. I think there was a police organization in Phoenix that got some of that money. Or you could just sit on it. You know, just because a politician isn't running this cycle doesn't mean they won't ever run again. You can just kind of sit on that nest egg in the event that something changes in the political landscape. I mean, if you think back, the whole reason Kyrsten Sinema likely isn't running this time is because she became an independent, a big part of the Democratic Party kind of turned on her. But we have something on the ballot right now that could create an open primary system where everyone's on the same ballot in the primary, you could see someone like a Kyrsten Sinema benefiting from that. So who knows if that passes, maybe we'll be talking about candidate cinema again at some point in

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Christopher Conover: the future, right? She can hold on to that money sort of indefinitely and see where we go from here. 

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Wayne Schutsky: That's right. 

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Christopher Conover: Campaign Finance is always such a fun adventure. People just think it's a lot of numbers, but as you and I know, it's there's a lot more in there.

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Wayne Schutsky: Yeah, it's always interesting to see where that money is actually going. 

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Christopher Conover: All right. Well, thanks for spending some time with us. 

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Wayne Schutsky: Yeah, no. Thanks for having me.

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Christopher Conover: That was k, j, Z, political desk reporter Wayne Schutsky. Even though Kyrsten Sinema is not running for re election. There are plenty of other federal races on the ballot this year, so we're going to spend the rest of the show looking at those federal races. We're going to welcome back Danyelle Khmara and Zac Ziegler, both from AZ PM, welcome back into the studio now. I get to play with my data flex just for a minute, I looked at the Congressional District Six, which runs from roughly Tucson to the New Mexico border, including Cochise County, Pima County and a bit of Santa Cruz County, and then up into Graham and Greenlee counties. Juan Ciscomani, the Republican in that race, is the incumbent. He won two years ago, and he beat Kirsten Engel, the Democrat in that race, as we've talked about on The Buzz previously, this is a rematch. I looked at how much money was coming out of specific zip codes. Interestingly, for angle, she raised money in 885 different zip codes during this election cycle. And Ciscomani raised money from 784 different zip codes.

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Zac Ziegler: So that that to me, I'm going to say sounds like notably more than we have in the state of Arizona. You know, earlier we were talking about that in state, out of state, money raising. I bet what you looked at probably has some interesting details on on that same kind of factor, where money was coming from out of state or where it was in state?

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Christopher Conover: It's exactly as you said. Zac, there's a mix of in state and out of state for both angle and Ciscomani, their biggest fundraising ZIP Code was 20001, for those of you who don't know the ZIP codes, off the top of your head, that's Washington DC. The four biggest ZIP code donors to angle were all Washington DC area ZIP codes little different for Ciscomani, his number two fundraising ZIP Code was Chevy Chase, Maryland, right there in that Washington, DC area. And then his number three and number four fundraising zip codes were 85718, which in the Tucson area is the Catalina Foothills and 85740, aEngelngle doesn't get into the Arizona ZIP codes until her fifth, if you will, most popular ZIP code, which, again, 85718. For Ciscomani that 85718, which, again, Catalina Foothills, one of the higher socio economic areas in the Tucson area, Ciscomani through the cycle, is raised over $860,000 there. Engel raised about half of that in that same zip code in southern Arizona, that one and 85750, are the ones that they always concentrate on, because that's where the big dollars are in southern Arizona, which makes up the bulk of the population of the sixth congressional district,

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Zac Ziegler: that, okay, that's interesting, and that race, you know, it's, it's raised a fair amount of money. $13 million was the number that I had from the last campaign finance reports. I've got a question a general for for you two, how even do you think donations are across the state's congressional districts? CD 6 is the leader. Do you think like these safer districts raise anywhere close to that?

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Danyelle Khmara: I would guess, not similar at all.

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Christopher Conover: I was gonna say cd six is one of the most competitive districts and most watched districts in the country. So I'm guessing they have way more money.

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Zac Ziegler: That is very true. So there are two races that feature incumbents in our districts that, according to Princeton's Gerrymandering Project, are extremely safe districts at CD seven, the one that Raul Grijalva is running against Republican challenger Daniel Butierrez, and congressional district nine, where Republican Paul Gosar is running against Democratic challenger Quacy Smith. In both of those, between the two of them, have raised a total of about $640,000 roughly a 20th of what we're talking about in this Ciscomani Engel race,

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Christopher Conover: right angle in 85718, has raised more than 400,000 and Cisco money has raised more than 850,000 in that same zip code, and that's just one zip code. 

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Danyelle Khmara: Hey, so Zac, what about safe districts that don't have an incumbent, like the districts that Debbie Lesko and Ruben Gallego are leaving. 

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Zac Ziegler: So there really is still a rush of money there, but it comes in the primary, not the general. So the two candidates left in Debbie Lesko's, soon to be former district, congressional district eight, which is seeing a race now between Blake Masters and Gregory Whitten. Those two candidates together have raised about $4.6 million the candidates who didn't make it out of the primary raised $4 million total. So that spending really seems to be going towards getting past that first race. The same thing is true in Gallego's district, where the candidates left in that one we have Jeff Zinke on the Republican side and Yasmin Ansari, the two of them combined have raised about two and a half million dollars. And combined is a bit of a stretch, as in that race, Zinke has less than $50,000 raised. They raised that money coming into the primary election, the candidates who were eliminated in the Democratic primary had almost $1.7 million. There is still a financial push. It's just coming before August.

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Danyelle Khmara: Yeah, that makes sense. 

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Christopher Conover: So Zac, you and I and Danyelle have looked at this data on and off for years, and one of my favorite questions always is, so who's the trend breaker?

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Zac Ziegler: So the one that caught my attention first was Congressional District Four, Greg Stanton's district. Princeton Gerrymandering Project said that race is almost as competitive as CD six, but Stanton and his challenger have raised less than a quarter of the donations in that race. Then you have something on the other side, Congressional District Two in the state's north which, according to that Princeton Gerrymandering Project, gives Republicans an 11 and a half point edge. It's actually the third most expensive race in the state. It's surprising until you learn that, according to Noble Predictive Insights, who recently put out a poll that showed that Eli crane, the incumbent Republican, is in a surprisingly tight race with the Democrat, former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.

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Christopher Conover: Well, I'm going to wrap this up with my favorite part of campaign finance data, and because the databases are so big and have so much information in them, but it seems like there's always a nugget in there. We'll call it what we call in radio the water cooler story, the thing, you all remember water coolers when we all always worked in the office where we all stood around, maybe it was the coffee pot, and talked about some very random thing. I found it in the CD 6 race. When I was looking at Juan Ciscomani's fundraising, I noticed there was a zip code that had hundreds and hundreds of donations, and it wasn't Washington, DC, and it wasn't Arizona. I had to look it up. And it's the town of Marietta, Georgia, or if you're not from the Atlanta area, it's pronounced Marietta. It's a suburb of Atlanta, and there's a retired woman there who gave Ciscomani more than 100 donations. The interesting thing is, one of the donations was 36 cents. The largest one was $28. Most of the donations were single digits, $1 $2 and sometimes they came more than one in a day. So we dug a little more on this woman, and we discovered that she's done the same with Abe Hamadeh, Eli Crane, Donald Trump and Act Blue. Now, Act Blue for those of you who don't follow this the way we do, if you donate to a Democrat online, it usually goes to Act Blue, and then Act Blue handles all the credit card information and sends that money to the candidates. She's donated more than $430,000 this cycle to campaigns all across the country, and most of the donations single digit dollars.

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Zac Ziegler: I do not envy how many text messages you must get. 

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Christopher Conover: We've been trying to figure out why she was doing this. Maybe it is text messages. Every time she gets a text message, she sends them $1 

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Danyelle Khmara: and from both political parties, that's got to be a lot. 

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Christopher Conover: Most of them were Republican, but act blue popped up in there. I will say, as someone who long ago worked in retail, if she's only donating 36 cents or $1 or really even anything under that $25 level, the campaign and Act Blue are paying more in fees than they are for that actual donation. But 

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Danyelle Khmara: I wonder if she knew that 

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Christopher Conover: she may have, uh, siskimani, for all of those donations she gave him, only got about $1,200 total, far from the max, but she's there very regularly, and multiple campaigns, not just Juan Ciscomani. 

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Danyelle Khmara: We've got to get her on the show. 

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Christopher Conover: We do now have her address, thanks to campaign finance, we could look her up. Danyelle, Zac, thank you so much for all your research this week

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Danyelle Khmara: You're absolutely welcome. It was fun,

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Zac Ziegler:  no problem, 

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Christopher Conover: And that's The Buzz for this week. You can find all our episodes online at azpm.org and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcast, just search for The Buzz. Arizona. We're also on the NPR app. Zac Ziegler is our producer, and Our music is by Enter the Haggis. I'm Christopher Conover. Thanks for listening.

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Nicole Cox: AZPM's original productions are made possible in part by the community service grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by donations from listeners like you. Learn more at support.azpm.org