• AZ-01: A super PAC called Turn AZ Blue is running TV ads as part of what appears to be an attempt by Republicans to meddle in the July 30 Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. David Schweikert in Arizona's swingy 1st District, though the operation does not appear to feature an all-star cast.
The Arizona Republic's Laura Gersony reports that the PAC is attacking one of the six Democratic candidates, former TV news anchor Marlene Galán-Woods, as a "political opportunist" who "used to be anti-choice." Galán-Woods, a former Republican who says she's long supported abortion rights, is attempting to get the commercial taken off the air by telling stations it is "riddled with lies and falsehoods."
It's not clear how much the group is spending, in large part because the group does not appear to be in compliance with relevant campaign finance laws. Even though it began running ads in March, Gersony writes that the PAC has yet to register with the FEC.
The FEC requires committees to submit paperwork within 10 days of receiving or spending $1,000. More than three months ago, the Cooper Courier's Camaron Stevenson reported that Turn AZ Blue had already deployed more than the minimum. EMILYs List, which supports Galán-Woods, asked the FEC to probe the PAC in April, but there have been no public developments since then.
One of the few pieces of information the group has provided is the name of its treasurer, Thomas Datwyler, a GOP operative who previously filled that role—or at least, appeared to—for none other than George Santos.
Datwyler denied having anything to do with the super PAC in an interview with Gersony and insisted someone had unwittingly placed his name on the documents. Datwyler, though, attracted national attention last year when his own lawyer said his client had deceived him by falsely claiming he'd never been treasurer to the disgraced congressman from New York prior to his expulsion.
The Daily Beast also reported last fall that a new Santos treasurer, one Andrew Olson, was actually a pseudonym for Datwyler.
"I don’t know if that makes Datwyler the George Santos of treasurers," Campaign Legal Center official Saurav Ghosh told the site, "but it doesn’t make him a good person or honest in any way."
The Daily Beast also noted that Mississippi's Republican attorney general, Lynn Fitch, announced last summer that she was investigating Datwyler over unrelated campaign finance allegations in her state, though no further details have become public. And the Courier's Stevenson cataloged still more examples of what he characterized as Datwyler's "long history of FEC violations."
The other name that Turn AZ Blue identified was that of Carlos Sierra, a Texas consultant who is no stranger to attempts to influence Democratic House primaries. In 2018, Sierra led an outside group that ran ads encouraging voters in the El Paso area to reject the frontrunner, Veronica Escobar, in favor of a more conservative opponent. The campaign didn't work, though, as Escobar won the nomination in a landslide before easily claiming Texas' 16th District in the fall.
Sierra, unlike Datwyler, acknowledged he'd been paid to work for Turn AZ Blue when Roll Call's Daniela Altimari contacted him in April. It's unlikely, though, that he wants to turn Arizona's 1st District blue at Schweikert's expense: Gersony notes that the congressman himself endorsed Sierra's expertise in "politics" on LinkedIn.
The PAC's offensive comes at a time when Democrats have a busy and hard-to-handicap primary to choose Schweikert's opponent in a Phoenix-area constituency that Joe Biden carried by a tight 50-49 margin four years ago.
In addition to Galán-Woods, the field consists of businessman Andrei Cherny; orthodontist Andrew Horne; former Arizona regional Red Cross CEO Kurt Kroemer; investment banker Conor O'Callaghan; and former state Rep. Amish Shah. There hasn't been any outside spending here yet—among the groups that have properly filed with the FEC, that is.