Two Clean Elections Investigations and a Utility Roundtable Are Hanging Over the Corporation Commission Race

Most Arizonans could not tell you who sits on the Arizona Corporation Commission. Most Arizonans could tell you what their power bill did this summer. The five people on that commission decide how much APS, Tucson Electric Power and hundreds of water companies are allowed to charge, and two of the five seats are on the Nov. 3 ballot.

The field is four candidates for two seats, and the top two vote-getters win. Republicans Kevin Thompson and Ralph Heap face Democrats Clara Pratte and Jonathon Hill. The commission is currently five Republicans and zero Democrats, so Republicans keep the majority however this goes. The money questions are what make the race worth reading about, and they run through three separate threads.

Corporation Commission candidates generally take public money through Clean Elections so they can say no to utility checks. In exchange they give up large private donations and follow strict rules about what they spend and how they report it. This year the Clean Elections Commission has opened investigations into both Republicans' campaigns.

Ralph Heap. A former Republican district chair filed a complaint that Heap's campaign signs, which turned up across the state, were never properly reported. Heap's own filings showed $644 spent on signs. His campaign says the signs were bought on a line of credit from Mesa Sign Shop, which is lawful. Clean Elections staff say that credit should have been reported and that taking on debt before qualifying for public money breaks the program's rules. In mid-August the commission voted 3 to 1 to release his public funding after he signed a statement that his reports were accurate, and it unanimously found reason to believe he violated the law or program rules and opened an investigation. It later unanimously refused his request to leave the program. His attorney, Tim La Sota, has called the case unprecedented and politically driven. A separate complaint questions how Heap's campaign gathered signatures to qualify for the ballot. The Clean Elections director has said the investigation could run through the end of the year.

Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers. On Sept. 24 the commission unanimously found reason to believe the two sitting commissioners broke the rules on reusing old campaign signs. The rule says a candidate may reuse signs from a prior campaign only after paying the Clean Elections Fund fair market value for them. The two reported about $3,844 on signs, which staff said likely would not cover all the signs photographed early in the campaign. Their attorney, Kory Langhofer, said the signs were stored by supporters and reused without the candidates' knowledge, and that his clients did not know the rule. He added that he has handled these cases for years and did not know it either. Thompson called the commission's valuation formula arbitrary and says the signs are worth next to nothing. Commissioners did not uphold the bulk of the original allegations. Myers lost his primary to Heap and is no longer a candidate, but he still sits on the commission through the end of the term.

None of this is a finding that anyone broke the law. A reason to believe vote means an investigation goes forward.

The second thread is bigger money and no yard signs. The Energy and Policy Institute, an environmental watchdog, has published records it obtained about the Regulators Roundtable, a network for conservative state utility commissioners that started in January 2025 as a subgroup of the Republican political committee GOPAC. The Washington Post drew on the same records.

According to the institute, Thompson helped recruit other state regulators into the Roundtable and helped solicit $50,000 corporate sponsorships, offering sponsors face time with regulators like himself. An internal pamphlet the institute obtained pitches sponsors on a chance to shape policy and build relationships with commissioners. The institute says all five Arizona commissioners attended at least one Roundtable event and that none disclosed travel or gifts from GOPAC or the Roundtable in 2025. It also says Thompson used a personal email account for commission-related communications with the group. The Post identified Google, the American Gas Association and the Nuclear Energy Institute as key investors, and the institute says Southwest Gas and the parent companies of APS and TEP gave thousands of dollars to GOPAC this year.

The Roundtable's president, Elizabeth Gianini, told the Post these forums are appropriate because no official actions occur during the programming. Thompson did not respond to KJZZ's request for comment. At a candidate forum on energy policy he defended meeting with Wall Street financiers who invest in utilities, saying the commission would be derelict not to understand what the investment community wants, and that investor access to cheap capital holds down borrowing costs and rates. In 2023 the commission cleared him of ethics violations over earlier meetings with financial firms.

Note who decided that. The commission enforces its own ethics code, and it is all Republican.

The third thread is why any of this matters in dollars. Democratic candidate Pratte says another 14 to 16 percent rate hike is on the docket for December. Attorney General Kris Mayes and other Democrats accuse the commission of letting APS and TEP pass data center costs to residential customers, and a consumer advocate's study alleges APS may have shifted up to $600 million in natural gas fuel costs onto other customers. Those are allegations, and they have not been tested in a proceeding.

On Oct. 21 the Attorney General's Office asked Myers to step away from the APS and TEP rate cases, citing his public criticism of Mayes. Myers told KJZZ he found no basis to recuse himself and has acted fairly and impartially. Under the commission's rules, the commission decides whether he recuses.

Thompson and the Republican side are right about this: Clean Elections found no violation yet, commissioners threw out most of the sign allegations against him, and his team says the signs were paid for in 2022. Heap's team is right that no violation has been proven and that credit from a sign vendor is lawful in ordinary campaigns. Gianini is right that a forum is not a vote.

The Democratic side is right about this: a regulator recruiting corporate sponsors for a group that sells access to regulators is a fair question for voters, and so is a commission that polices its own ethics code. Pratte and Hill are right that there is no Democrat on this commission today to push back.

What nobody has shown: that any Roundtable money changed a commission vote, or that the sign cases involved utility money at all. Pratte co-founded the energy company Navajo Power, and we have not checked whether it has matters before the commission.

The investigations will outlast the election. The rate cases will not wait for them.

This story draws on KJZZ, ABC15, Axios and AZFamily reporting on the Clean Elections matters; the Energy and Policy Institute's published records on the Regulators Roundtable and the Washington Post reporting they fed; the Attorney General's motions as described by KJZZ; and the Clean Elections Commission's public voter guide. AI research tools helped pull and cross-check the record, and the Clean Elections case files, campaign finance reports and Roundtable documents should be read in full, which we have not yet done. Every investigation described here is open and none is a finding that a rule was broken. We are looking for the case files, each campaign's finance reports, any utility money inside this race, and any business Pratte's company has before the commission. On Oct. 24 we sent questions to Rep. Heap, to the Pratte and Hill campaigns through their shared media contact, and to the Clean Elections Commission. Clean Elections Executive Director Tom Collins pointed us to the commission's meeting page, where the records, discussions and votes are posted; Rep. Heap and the Pratte and Hill campaigns had not responded by publication. Commissioner Thompson's campaign lists no press contact, and we were not able to reach him. Corrections and additions are welcome at [email protected].