The 2026 midterm elections are more than nine months away, which to some may seem like a long time. But for a political junkie, that’s just a hop and a skip as campaign season heats up.
As they say, there’s a lot of game left until the elections in November, and there are countless variables that could change the direction the wind blows. But there is one concrete data point that can provide a sense of what’s going on: money.
Candidates’ campaign finance reports, which were due for Arizona candidates on Jan. 15, are the foundation — but not the whole story.
While it used to be that a candidates’ fundraising total was a fine indicator of popular support and electoral chances, that changed in 2010 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision (which celebrated its 16th birthday yesterday). Citizens United allowed special interests to “spend without limit” in elections, as former President Barack Obama famously put it.
Nowadays, outside spending makes up a massive chunk of electoral influence — and allows the wealthy to have a disproportionate impact by giving unlimited financial support to PACs, which can use those funds to run ads to influence races.
With no presidential election this cycle, the levers of power at the state level are absorbing the spotlight — and the stakes are high in Arizona. The state’s five most important offices are up for grabs and control over both legislative chambers hangs in the balance. In case you haven’t been closely following campaign coffers, here’s a quick run-down on the biggest races in Arizona:
Gov. Katie Hobbs has a huge war chest of $6 million, while the three Republican candidates vying for their party’s nomination have between $275,000 and $1.2 million in cash on hand. Karrin Taylor Robson — who has the most cash of the Republican pack — has deep pockets and has already poured more than $2 million of her own money into her campaign in loans.
Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who won by a mere 280 votes in 2022, is battling for a second term in what some political consultants believe might end up being the most expensive attorney general race ever. She has $2.8 million in cash stashed away, while Republican challengers Rodney Glassman and Senate President Warren Petersen have $3.3 million and $1.3 million, respectively. Glassman is also being investigated for campaign finance violations and as Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reported, $1 million of that war chest is his own money.
Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has $460,000 on hand in his effort to defend his position as chief elections overseer, while Freedom Caucus challenger Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin has a bit more than $250,000.
But even the highest of those totals pale in comparison to the millions that national groups could pour into Arizona to help defend or flip those offices.
With its status as a purple state that can swing either way, Arizona has recently become a national hotspot for spending by PACs and other big groups. That should be no different in 2026, as heavy bags of outside money are expected to fall on Arizona since the major races and the overall battle for control of the Legislature are of serious consequence.
“I think there’s going to be money coming from every direction,” Democratic political consultant Stacy Pearson told us. “The money’s gonna come in late. We’ll start to see it at the end of the next campaign finance report,” which is due in April.
Democrats are on the offensive in legislative races after having been been close but unsuccessful in flipping enough seats to take control of a chamber for the first time since 1992. Two congressional districts are also key targets for the left: the seats of Republican U.S. Reps. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani.
But at the same time, the GOP will be going on the attack in the three most important statewide races with the hope of unseating three Democrats who narrowly won their seats in the 2022 midterm elections. Democrats fended off an expected “red wave” backlash to President Joe Biden, which didn’t quite materialize that year.
This time, conventional wisdom would have it that Republicans are going to be battling against a national swing to the left after a chaotic first year of the Trump 2.0 administration — and Arizona Democrats are hoping to ride that momentum.
“It will be a tough year for Republicans, without a doubt,” GOP political consultant Barrett Marson told us. “But this is still Arizona, and Republicans continue to have an electoral advantage.”
Democrats have their own major challenge: voter registration for the party lags behind both Republicans and Independents.
That problem may give some big spenders pause, so efforts are underway to etch away at their registration deficit.
The Democratic National Committee launched a campaign to spend millions on voter registration in Arizona and Nevada, passing the money on to individual campaigns and nonprofit organizations.
A number of more narrowly-focused advocacy groups are expected to pitch in.
Yesterday, EMILYs LIST announced that Arizona would be at the heart of a $15 million plan to support women candidates — which include Hobbs and Mayes.
The conservative and pro–business Club for Growth could make it rain to support Schweikert or Biggs, both of whom have ties to the D.C. organization. It dropped $5.5 million on the Arizona Senate race in 2022 for Republican Blake Masters, who lost to Sen. Mark Kelly.
There’s a potential for the secretary of state race to be a lightning rod, given Kolodin’s troubling record as a MAGA-aligned attorney who has been a foremost warrior for right-wing election conspiracies. His role in one lawsuit earned him a year-and-a-half of probation from the State Bar of Arizona.
“Anyone with an interest in defending elections is going to take a look at the secretary of state race,” Democratic campaign consultant Eric Chalmers said of the potential for democracy-focused groups to provide financial support for Fontes.
Some of the groups to watch are based in Arizona — though their spending tends to be a little lower than national groups — in the hundreds of thousands or small millions. These local PACs include the Realtors Of AZ PAC (which doled out $356,000 last quarter) and various union locals, like Arizona Pipe Trades 469 and United Food & Commercial Workers Local 99.
As far as legislative races go, it’s also worth keeping an eye on the DLCC Victory Fund and House Victory Fund, the PACs for both caucuses of the Legislature.
House Republicans — led by Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro — lagged behind Democrats three months ago ($533,000 to $1.78 million) until the end of the year. In those last three months, the GOP had an impressive haul of $1.73 million, bringing them close to Democrats’ cash total.
In the race to occupy the executive tower, there will almost certainly be heavy spending by both parties’ national apparatus for spending on gubernatorial races — the Democratic Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association.
But it may be a while before those big outside bucks hit Arizona.
GOP hopefuls for governor, attorney general and superintendent of public schools will be duking it out in a primary until August. So it’s unlikely that big national groups will throw money at the race until there’s a nominee, though they could spend money on ads trashing Hobbs and Mayes.
And since there won’t be a Republican nominee for some time, groups like the Democratic Governors Association probably won’t be spending much until the race really heats up.
But there’s also a possibility that the big-money groups decide their nominee is so unelectable that they don't bother spending in Arizona— as Republican Kari Lake experienced in 2024.
With all 435 seats in the U.S. House up for reelection and 39 governors on the ballot this year, national groups will have to pick their battles.
Recipe for disaster: Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law could lead to deadly encounters if ICE and Border Patrol squads come here, Attorney General Kris Mayes told 12News’ Brahm Resnik. That law allows people to use guns if they believe their lives are in danger, which makes Arizona “very, very different from almost every other state where this (ICE) buildup is happening,” Mayes said. She didn’t condone using violence, but she was concerned about masked, armed agents without uniforms and driving unmarked vehicles, as ICE and Border Patrol have done elsewhere, trying to arrest an Arizonan who’s packing heat. She also said she’d prosecute ICE agents who break Arizona law.
It was a Nazi party: Phoenix Union High School Governing Board member Jeremiah Cota, who made headlines last year for saying the Lord’s Prayer at a board meeting, attended a Christmas party hosted by a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, the Republic’s Erick Trevino and Daniel Gonzalez report. The party was held alongside the Turning Point America Fest convention in Phoenix and hosted by Republicans for National Renewal, which was founded in 2020 and has ties to noted bigot Nick Fuentes.
Name cleared: A judge found Chandler Councilman OD Harris not guilty of being the getaway driver while his wife tore up a campaign sign that criticized Harris as he ran for reelection two years ago, saying the prosecutor who brought the case didn’t provide substantial evidence that he ordered the signs destroyed, and anyway, they weren’t covered under Arizona’s sign law, the Republic’s Lauren De Young reports. Harris said he plans to file a malicious prosecution complaint against the Scottsdale prosecutor's office.
"The fact that I went through this for almost two years and to be here now, I'm standing as a resilient testimony that ... the justice system does work," Harris said after the ruling. "This case was about racist people who came against me. ... I'm glad that justice prevailed.”
Quid pro quo: Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels worked out an arrangement with drone company Draganfly where Dannels would get to play with fancy drones to boost his border security credentials, while Draganfly would get much-needed publicity, Beau Hodai reports for the Phoenix New Times and Cochise Regional News. Public records and emails obtained by Hodai showed how a dog-and-pony show at the Arizona-Mexico border last November was just one part of a campaign by the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office to help Draganfly get lucrative contracts.
Here’s a quid pro quo we can get behind: You subscribe, we report the news.
Perp walked: Scottsdale police escorted the mayor’s chief of staff out of a planning and zoning commission hearing after allegations of wrongdoing emerged, the Scottsdale Independent’s J. Graber reports. The details of the allegations aren’t clear yet, but it appears they have more to do with violations of city policy than actual criminal behavior. Chief of Staff R. Lamar Whitmer was placed on paid non-disciplinary suspension while his boss, Mayor Lisa Borowsky, claims city officials are trying to “defame and humiliate” Whitmer, per the Republic’s Shawn Raymundo.
In other, other news
A whistleblower says ADOT is unfairly penalizing third-party vendors (Reagan Priest / Capitol Times) … Arizonans who are enrolled with a federally recognized tribe can now get driver’s licenses with a “Native American” designation (Katya Mendoza / Arizona Public Media) … Chants of “FUCK ICE” and “SI SE PUEDE” rang out yesterday as ASU students protested the Trump administration (Morgan Fischer / New Times) … And a week after GOP lawmakers tried to use a giant pot of federal border security money to balance their budget proposal, they’re hassling Gov. Katie Hobbs for trying to do the same thing (Wayne Schutsky / KJZZ).
We always get a kick out of seeing Stephanie Grisham — the former legendary Arizona spokeswoman turned White House press secretary turned traitor to the Trump family — pop up in our social feeds.
Actually, she blocked us a long time ago — so we mostly catch her tweets when they make news.
Here’s the latest!