by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Jul 16, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Attorney General Kris Mayes has long fancied herself as a champion for ratepayers. After another round of rate hikes rolled in at the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), this time a proposed 14% increase by both APS and TEP, AG Mayes fired off a press release announcing that she will “vigorously oppose” these requests as “Arizona residents struggle to keep up with ever-increasing electricity bills.”
Setting aside the fact that the AG has little purview over ACC affairs, Mayes seems to think that her own time serving on the Commission back in the 2000s makes her uniquely qualified to stop what seems like an endless barrage of double-digit rate hikes by our public utilities. Unfortunately for ratepayers, having Kris Mayes involved will only pour fuel on the Net Zero fire currently raging at the Corporation Commission.
You see, Kris Mayes is the one that laid the foundation for the Green Scam rate hikes Arizonans are suffering through today. In fact, the biggest irony about having Kris Mayes jump into the rate hike fray is that it highlights the dangerous parallels between the Commission she served on in 2006 and the one that we have today…
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by Matthew Holloway | Feb 9, 2025 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
A Democrat SuperPAC bankrolled by leftist billionaires Michael Bloomberg, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has reportedly targeted Arizona’s 2nd District Congressman Eli Crane for removal in the 2026 Congressional midterm. In a post to X, Crane shared the report from Fox News reporter Liz Elkind listing him with 13 other Congressmen to be opposed with a $50M investment summed up in a simple response: “Bring It.”
In a post to X on Monday, Crane wrote in full, “The great thing about #AZ02 is they see through phony attacks by coastal elites. Bring it.”
Elkind had reported that “Democrats’ House Majority PAC is rolling out a new initiative to win back working-class voters[.] 2026 Win Them Back Fund is launching with a $50M investment & initial plan targeting 14 Republicans who narrowly won their seats in November.”
According to Fox News, Mike Smith, president of the House Majority PAC told the New York Times that the “Win Them Back Fund” was created with an aim to generate appeal to draw working class voters to the Democratic Party after so many flipped to support President Donald Trump and the Republican Party this year. “We’re laying a marker down now,” he told the Times. “This is a priority.”
In addition to Crane, the House Majority PAC is targeting GOP Reps. Nick Begich (R-AK); David Valadao (R-CA-22); Ken Calvert, (R-CA-41); Gabe Evans, (R-CO-08); Mariannette Miller-Meeks, (R-IA-01); John James, (R-MI-10).
In a press release obtained by Fox News, the PAC said, “One of the major roadblocks we have faced as a party has been declining support among a multi-racial group of working class voters. That’s why HMP is today launching a 2026 Win Them Back Fund focused on ensuring that we win back working class voters across the congressional battlefield.”
“While Democrats at the Presidential level have consistently lost ground with working class voters for over the last decade, House Democrats like Reps. Adam Gray, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Don Davis, and Gabe Vasquez continue to overperform with this crucial bloc of voters. Their victories demonstrate that House Democrats can win back this coalition of voters with the support of strategic investments in recruitment, research, and programming.”
As noted by the outlet, while Democrats continue to deride billionaires such as Elon Musk and President Trump’s participation in the electoral process, high-profile donations to the PAC included $13 million from Bloomberg, $3 million from Pritzker, and $2 million from Steyer.
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Dec 9, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
A History of Harmful Mandates
Arizonans have faced repeated attempts over the last six years by various interest groups to impose costly Green New Deal energy mandates on utility ratepayers. In 2018, liberal billionaire Tom Steyer bankrolled a statewide ballot measure to require utilities to obtain 50% of their energy from renewable sources by 2030. Voters realized the danger of this California-style energy plan and rejected it by a 2 to 1 margin.
Immediately after the Steyer initiative failed at the ballot, the Arizona Corporation Commission began considering their own green energy mandate to completely ban fossil fuel generation in Arizona by 2050. The Commission’s plan was even more radical than the energy initiative, and this time the mandate was being pushed by our regulated utilities, not far left radicals. This caught most observers by surprise—the utilities were among the opponents of the Steyer initiative, and now they were cheerleading energy mandates.
Why the change of heart by our monopoly utility providers? The reason is simple—they knew that if the Commission adopted official policy requiring Green New Deal mandates, they would be guaranteed full cost recovery from their captive ratepayers. After fierce opposition from ratepayers and organizations like the Free Enterprise Club, this proposed mandate was rejected by the Commission in early 2022.
Unfortunately, this victory for ratepayers was short lived. Almost immediately after the Commission voted to reject costly energy mandates, the utilities announced that they would be implementing their clean energy agenda anyway, irrespective of what their captive ratepayers thought about it. This didn’t come as a total surprise, considering these utilities have gone all-in on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and the accompanying “Net Zero” commitments to ban fossil fuels in their SEC filings to shareholders, which our organization began advocating against at the Commission earlier this year.
We told the Commission that if the utilities are allowed to operate under ESG, every downstream policy decision would be shaped by it—ultimately resulting in massive ESG rate hikes for Arizona ratepayers. Based on the energy resource plans submitted by the utilities last month, it appears our predictions have been proven correct…
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