Arizona Democratic Party Moves to Stop Billionaires From Buying Primaries

The Arizona Democratic Party moved over the weekend to bar billionaires and corporations from using their wealth to purchase primary elections, a key step for progressives who have been pushing the Democratic Party nationwide to curb the political influence of ultra-rich donors.

A newly approved resolution, passed by voice vote at the Arizona Democratic Party's State Committee meeting on Saturday, instructs the party to "establish a 'People's Primary' policy to bar, to the greatest extent possible, the use of massive private wealth to buy or unduly influence our primary elections."

Organizers and supporters said the resolution's passage marks a significant victory for progressives who have been pushing Democratic leaders to target the outsize influence of big money on primary contests. The weekend vote marked the first time a state Democratic Party has formally committed to challenging big money in primaries, according to organizers.

"This is a major win for working-class Arizonans and for every voter who's tired of watching billionaires spend millions to elect candidates who will screw over the 99% to make them even richer," said Kai Newkirk, co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Council. "Arizona Democrats just sent a message: Our primaries are going to be decided by the people, not the highest bidder. And the days of billionaires and corporations trying to buy them are numbered."

Saturday's vote set in motion the process of crafting party policy changes that are expected to face a final vote later this year.

The resolution, organized by the Stop Big Money AZ campaign, states that the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party's rules panel "shall form an ad-hoc committee" to develop new policies to achieve the resolution's objective to "ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that candidates in Democratic primaries are not benefited by, dependent on, or elected due to outside or independent electioneering spending funded by big donors."

While the resolution doesn't mention super PACs explicitly, it targets wealthy donors "who are circumventing legal limits on direct contributions to a candidate's campaign fund to spend tens or hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars of private wealth to elect the candidates of their choice."

Super PACs, an outgrowth of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, are allowed to raise unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, and other organizations, provided that they don't coordinate directly with the candidates they are supporting—a restriction that is often flouted, or impossible to detect, in practice.

A report published earlier this year found that the top 100 billionaire families in the U.S. pumped a record-shattering $2.6 billion into federal elections in 2024—which amounted to one of every six dollars spent by all candidates, parties, and campaign committees in total. The overwhelming majority of that spending flowed into the coffers of super PACs.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a vocal supporter of banning super PAC spending in Democratic primaries, applauded the Arizona Democratic Party's passage of the "People's Primary" resolution.

"Congratulations to the Arizona Democrats for getting the ball rolling on this enormously important issue," Sanders said Monday. "Billionaires must not be allowed to buy Democratic primary elections. Other states should follow suit."