The monsoon season rains are anticipated to wind down in Arizona, but the political attack ads are picking up.
Arizona residents have likely received campaign mailers at this point in the election season. Some of those mailers have a disclosure that they were paid for by the Arizona Democratic Party, thanks to funds by Arizona Public Service (APS) and Elevance Health (operating as Wellpoint, formerly Amerigroup).
These mailers appear to be targeting voters in swing districts throughout the state.
One mailer reflected opposition to Republican state legislative candidates seeking to represent Legislative District 13: Julie Willoughby for State Senate, and Kevin Hartke and Janet Weninger for State House. This mailer claimed Willoughby, Hartke, and Weninger would cost taxpayers more through school choice funds.
Another mailer reflected support for Willoughby’s Democratic primary opponent, Kristie O’Brien. This mailer claimed O’Brien would lower costs for the community.
Both mailers stress affordability, but they were financed by the same companies which have sought or imposed double-digit rate increases for Arizonans’ utilities and healthcare.
According to state campaign finance records, Elevance Health donated $25,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party last May. They have never donated prior to that time. As reported previously, Elevance Health was one of the top single donors last year to the heavily indebted Arizona Democratic Party.
APS donated $40,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party in three installments: June 2025, September 2025, and June 2026. The earliest APS donations on record to Arizona Democrats occurred in 2024, totaling $80,000.
As reported previously, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., the owner of APS, was one of the top donors for Gov. Katie Hobbs’ secretive inaugural and litigation funds.
As far as state campaign finance records go online (back to 2002), neither Elevance Health nor APS has ever donated to the Arizona Republican Party.
Both organizations have made headlines over the past year for raising their rates by double digits.
Elevance Health recently raised its premium rates by 24% across its Affordable Care Act and Medicare plans. It also requested an additional 17% increase in rate hikes for 2027, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company is also looking to cut down on the offerings within its affordable healthcare portfolio. It has signaled that it will exit underperforming Medicaid programs in multiple states by the end of 2027, following its recent departures from Louisiana and the Washington, D.C., markets.
Similarly, APS has requested to increase its rates by 14% to 16% for residential customers and more than 45% for large load users like data centers and manufacturing companies. APS is also petitioning to implement a new formula that would allow for automatic rate adjustments annually.
This financial support from Elevance Health and APS has boosted Democrats’ ongoing efforts to flip key seats in the Arizona legislature, which would result in Republicans losing their slim majority.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is targeting 17 races throughout the state, including in Legislative Districts 2, 4, 13, and 17 in the Senate and Legislative Districts 2, 4, 13, 16, 17, and 23 in the House.
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Something is missing from the Democratic Party’s 2026 message, and its absence speaks louder than any speech. Climate change, the issue party leaders once called an existential emergency, has gone quiet. Journalists even have a name for it: climate hushing.
An analysis of congressional press releases by Inside Climate News found that Democratic mentions of climate change have plummeted since 2025, while talk of energy affordability has surged. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, once a green energy champion, now sells herself as a fighter against high utility bills, and her pivot is being called a blueprint for the party.
Behind closed doors, the shift is even starker. At a recent Senate Democratic strategy retreat, the polling presentation did not ask a single question about climate change. One attendee, Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Whitehouse, called it a massive blind spot.
Give the strategists credit. They read the same election returns everyone else did. The party’s own review of the 2024 loss reportedly found that green transition messaging frightened workers in traditional industries who feared for their jobs. Voters punished Democrats for the high cost of living, and nothing raised that cost more visibly than energy.
But notice what the party retreated toward. They did not change the subject to something safe and unrelated. They ran straight at affordability, the exact ground where their climate record is weakest. You do not flee toward your own weakness. You flee toward it only when you have no choice, because the voters are already holding their ever-increasing electric bills.
And those bills tell the story. The average American residential electricity rate has climbed about 25% in four years, from just over 15 cents per kilowatt hour in 2022 to nearly 19 cents this spring. In the last year alone, rates jumped more than 7%.
Federal forecasters expect another increase in 2026, with the sharpest pain along the East Coast, where climate mandates are most aggressive. These are not acts of nature. They are the predictable result of policies that shut down reliable power plants and force expensive, weather-dependent replacements onto the grid. Like adding an undependable car to your family’s budget. It just increases your costs if you want reliability.
The price tag reaches well beyond the monthly bill. When Congress passed the ill-named Inflation Reduction Act, budget scorekeepers pegged its energy subsidies at around 370 billion dollars over ten years. The real number keeps climbing.
The Congressional Budget Office now estimates the clean energy tax credits alone will add 825 billion dollars to the deficit, and the Cato Institute puts the full range as high as nearly 2 trillion dollars over the same window. That is a wealth transfer from ordinary ratepayers and taxpayers to well-connected developers, and it buys higher prices, not lower ones.
Here is the admission hiding inside the silence. If the green transition were actually making energy cheaper, climate and affordability would be the same message, and there would be nothing to hush. The party could brag about both in the same breath. The fact that its own strategists had to choose between them, and chose to bury climate, is a confession that the two pull in opposite directions.
Some Democrats insist this is a recast, not a retreat. They argue that cheap solar and wind are the affordability answer, and that voters can be won by promising climate policy will lower bills.
But that claim collapses on contact with its own logic. If renewables were truly the cheapest power, they would not need mandates, subsidies, and regulatory waivers to force utilities to buy them. You do not have to compel people to choose the cheaper option. The mandates exist precisely because the market, left alone, would choose otherwise.
The honest lesson is one conservatives have argued for years. Reliable, affordable energy and heavy-handed climate central planning cannot coexist. Americans want to keep the lights on and the bills low, and they have figured out which policies deliver that and which do not.
Democratic strategists have figured it out too. That is why they have stopped talking. The quiet is not a change of heart. It is a change of subject, and it amounts to an admission that the policies were too expensive and too restrictive to defend out loud. The rest of us should say plainly that we do not want less reliable and more expensive electricity.
A new data analysis.shows that Arizona is facing more of an affordability crisis than other states as the 2026 elections heats up.
Arizona households presently carry above-average debt across auto loans, credit cards, and mortgages. Arizonans are also falling behind on payments at rates well above the national average, according to new analysis by the Common Sense Institute (CSI).
In Arizona, CSI found that auto loan debt is 7% higher, credit card debt is 8% higher, and mortgage debt is 22% higher than the national average.
Arizona also sits at the bottom half of the nation in terms of average credit score, which is 666. The state ranks 30th overall, having fallen seven points in 2025 and experiencing the 10th-fastest drop in average household credit score among all states.
Arizona experienced the second-largest increase in per-capita debt out of 11 reported states. The state has experienced a rise in per-capita debt amounting to nearly 130% since 2003. Only Texas reported a worse increase in per capita debt, at 148%.
That metes out to an average per-capita household debt of $74,000. CSI reported that this average debt in Arizona has largely been driven by mortgage debt.
The same can be said for households elsewhere on that point. Nationally, household debt neared $20 trillion by the end of last year — much of that driven by mortgage debt ($13.2 trillion, an increase of 4.5%), followed by auto loans and student loan balances ($1.7 trillion respectively, reflecting increases of 0.7% and 3%) and credit card debt ($1.3 trillion, an increase of 5.5%).
Arizona didn’t lead by all negative metrics. Arizona’s higher education-related debt was 3% lower than the national average, and student loan debt was 8% lower than the national average.
And according to CSI, less than 23% of Arizona households have liquidity resilience, or ability to handle potential credit problems — far less than the average household nationwide. CSI attributed this to Arizonans possessing higher-than-average debt, higher delinquency, and a lower cash cushion than the average household in the nation.
The latest data from the Consumer Price Index also reflected that Arizona had more sluggish growth than the rest of the nation. Yet, Arizonans have been spending an average of more than $1,000 more per month than they would have if inflation had risen steadily at 2% since December 2020.
The average Phoenix-area household was spending about $6,900 per month as of June 2026, compared to the projected $5,800 under a 2% inflation trajectory.
In December 2020, the average Phoenix-area household was spending about $5,200.
The findings contrast with Gov. Katie Hobbs’ recent messaging on Arizona’s economy.
In April, Hobbs announced that Arizona ranked second in the nation for economic performance and fifth for economic outlook in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual Rich States, Poor States report. She also argued that her administration’s policies have lowered costs for working families.
Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ05) says Arizona’s affordability crisis cannot be solved by housing policy alone, arguing that water management, utility costs, state trust lands, natural resource development, and election integrity all require a new approach under the state’s next governor.
In an exclusive interview with AZ Free News, Biggs outlined what he described as the core priorities of a potential administration, saying Arizona’s long-term prosperity depends on responsible resource management while restoring confidence in state government.
“The affordability of housing” is the state’s biggest economic challenge, Biggs said.
“It gets attention, but it doesn’t encompass everything that’s related to it,” he continued. “The water issue is massive, and it goes hand in glove with housing.”
Biggs argued that utility costs, water availability, and management of Arizona’s natural resources all contribute to the state’s affordability challenges.
“But the one aspect to this all that’s not being addressed in this administration… is how do you manage the state’s natural resources, including state trust land?” Biggs said. “That is going to be critical going forward on affordability issues in the state and viability of long-term economic success.”
For Biggs, water policy remains central to that vision. Biggs said Arizona must play a far more active role in negotiations over the future of the Colorado River rather than allowing federal agencies to dictate the outcome.
“You have to be engaged,” Biggs said.
He said he has met with officials from the United States Bureau of Reclamation, the United States Department of the Interior, the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of Commerce, and the United States Department of Defense, arguing Arizona’s water allocation should reflect the state’s importance to national food production, semiconductor manufacturing, commerce, and defense.
“I’m encouraging all of them… to redo the environmental impact statement so it actually considers the national food security issue… the national defense sector… and the microchips and the industry,” Biggs said.
He also credited bipartisan work with Democrat Rep. Greg Stanton (AZ-04) to secure additional conservation funding for Lower Basin states and said Arizona’s advocacy helped encourage releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to stabilize Lake Powell.
Biggs also called for expanded forest thinning, continued livestock grazing, removal of invasive salt cedar, and responsible development of Arizona’s mineral resources.
“We have 26 of the critical minerals necessary in this state,” Biggs said. “You’ve got to figure out a way to use that and allow for extraction and development in a very rational and sane way.”
Addressing another growing issue, Biggs said he supports data center development but opposes taxpayer incentives.
“I sat down with multiple brokers for data centers and said, ‘Look, here’s the deal. No special breaks. No special benefits,'” Biggs said.
Instead, he said developers should finance their own electrical generation and water infrastructure without reducing resources available to existing residential or commercial customers. “We’re going to allow you guys to develop your power… provided that you do not encroach on current and future commercial and residential users.”
A policy report released by the Goldwater Institute in February warned that Arizona’s growing role as a national hub for data centers could be undermined by municipal regulations driven by concerns over water use, electricity demand, and land use.
On elections, Biggs said restoring public confidence would be among his first priorities if elected governor.
He pointed to Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto of a Florida-style election integrity bill earlier this year and pledged to sign similar legislation if elected.
“One of the first bills I will sign is that Florida-style election integrity bill in January of 2027,” Biggs said.
Asked about the legal dispute between the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over election administration, Biggs declined to side with either party but said he has spoken with both.
“I think both sides truly want us to have a fair, transparent election,” Biggs said. “They need to get this thing sorted out quickly.”
Biggs said he believes Arizona can become “the leader on election integrity” by the end of a potential administration.
The congressman is facing fellow Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ01), business owner Ken Miceli, and entrepreneur Scott Neely for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the primary and has centered much of his campaign on affordability, border security, government reform, and economic growth.
A new report from the Common Sense Institute finds that rising costs for housing, groceries, insurance, and child care continue to strain affordability for Arizona families, even as inflation has cooled from its post-pandemic peak.
According to CSI’s latest affordability rankings, Arizona is now the seventh least affordable state in the nation and ranks 45th overall when comparing household incomes to the cost of essential expenses. The state has fallen 12 spots in affordability since 2019, but remains more affordable than Florida, Oregon, New York, Massachusetts, and California, which ranked 46th through 50th, respectively.
CSI’s analysis found that Arizona households retain about 19.6% of their gross income after paying for taxes and basic expenses such as shelter, groceries, health insurance, car insurance, gasoline, and child care. That amounts to about $1,700 per month left over, compared to the national average of 24.7% ($2,170 per month).
Arizona is becoming less affordable for families across the state. According to CSI’s latest analysis, Arizona now ranks as the 7th least affordable state in the nation — a 12-spot drop since 2019.
— Common Sense Institute Arizona (@CSInstituteAZ) April 14, 2026
The report found that Arizona households are spending about $19,300 more per year on essential expenses than they did in 2019, exceeding the national average increase of $15,400. CSI estimates that Arizona households have effectively lost 3.8% of their gross income to rising prices since before the pandemic.
Housing costs have continued to be the primary cause of affordability challenges in the state. According to a recent report, shelter and utility costs for Arizona households rose by $9,012 annually between 2019 and 2025, a 59% increase that ranked as the fourth-largest increase in the country. Arizona also experienced some of the nation’s fastest-growing grocery and car insurance costs during the same period.
CSI reported that grocery costs rose by $3,375, child care costs by $3,950, health insurance costs by $1,302, car insurance costs by $1,355, and gasoline costs by $313 between 2019 and 2025.
The report found that child care remains a major expense for working families. In Arizona, one full-time working parent must devote about 38% of their gross income to cover child care costs, slightly below the national average of roughly 40%. Nationally, CSI estimated that the average household spends about 16.9% of gross income on child care for preschool- and school-aged children.
“Inflation reports may show things are cooling, but that doesn’t mean life is getting more affordable for Arizonans,” said Zachary Milne, Senior Economist and Research Analyst for the Common Sense Institute AZ. “Our analysis shows the cost of everyday essentials is still significantly higher than it was before the pandemic, and for many families, incomes haven’t kept pace. That gap is what continues to drive the affordability challenges we’re seeing across Arizona today.”
CSI noted that inflation in the Phoenix area has moderated in recent months, with consumer prices rising 2.2% year over year in December. However, according to CSI’s Arizona inflation update, prices in the Phoenix metro area remain 28.9% higher than they were in December 2019, resulting in an additional $1,441 in average monthly costs for a typical Arizona household.
Arizona households are also carrying greater debt, coupled with declining credit scores and rising delinquency rates, at levels significantly higher than the national average, according to CSI’s April 1 report.
CSI detailed its data sources and methodology on its website.
