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Arizona Democratic Party Moves to Stop Billionaires From Buying Primaries
"Congratulations to the Arizona Democrats for getting the ball rolling on this enormously important issue," said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Other states should follow suit."
Jun 10, 2025
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."
We did it! AZ Dems made history today. We are the first state party in our nation to commit to ban billionaires and corporations from buying our primary elections! Thank you to everyone who helped make it happen from our amazing @stopbigmoneyaz organizing team to @BernieSanders! pic.twitter.com/IkbzQ0bIce
— Kai Newkirk (@kai_newkirk) June 8, 2025
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."
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When Given a Chance, Voters Choose to Increase Equality and Redistribute Wealth
A recent report on citizen-driven initiatives found that people in red and blue states vote for policies that are egalitarian and economically redistributive.
Apr 29, 2025
On the evening of November 5, 2024, I sat at a gathering of organizers and volunteers from the campaign to pass Proposition 139, a citizen-driven initiative in Arizona seeking to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution.
After an hour or so of waiting with bated breath, the bulk of Arizona’s ballot initiative results had been counted and posted online. Our hard work had paid off! Prop 139 had amassed 66% voter support (a number that would decrease to a still impressive 61% by the final tally.) After a significant round of applause and the shedding of a few tears, the party settled into a pleasant thrum.
At first I expected shouting, screaming, and crying—we had won a massive victory! But I quickly understood that the celebration was more subdued than expected because the results were exactly what the lead organizers of the campaign hadanticipated: a win.
Healthcare Rising and Prop 139 won because they refused to partake in party politics and instead tailored their campaign toward fighting for issues that were resonant and supported in their constituency and across the political spectrum.
Ultimately, it was unsurprising that this initiative to enshrine abortion access passed in Arizona, despite voters in the state supporting anti-abortion candidate and now U.S. President Donald Trump, because reproductive freedom itself as a policy has proven to be overwhelmingly popular when put to a vote by the electorate.
A recent report from our team at the Center for Work and Democracy uses data from citizen-driven initiatives—ballot initiatives that are drafted, petitioned, and voted on by citizens themselves—from the last 15 years to see where patterns in voting emerge. Put very briefly, we found that people vote for policies that are egalitarian and economically redistributive.
Egalitarian measures—which equalize rights, resources, and decision-making power in society—pass at a rate of 65.63% across blue and red states alike. Initiatives supporting reproductive rights, for example, are considered egalitarian and prove to be extremely successful at the polls. Despite a difficult loss in Florida in the 2024 election and a complicated voting stalemate in Nebraska, abortion access has been protected by voters in 14 out of 17 cases since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
Redistributive measures are a subsect of egalitarian initiatives that specifically focus on the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, like raising the minimum wage. With an even greater passage rate than other egalitarian measures, redistributive ballot measures clock in with an impressive win rate of 75%. In red states, this number rises all the way to a whopping 92% compared to 61.29% in blue states. (We found that blue states’ averages are skewed down by California’s initiative results, which are far less progressive than the state’s image.)
When Healthcare Rising Arizona and the other co-organizers of the campaign for Prop 139 set out to get the initiative on the ballot and enshrined in the state constitution, they knew that party politics were not going to help their cause. From day one, the campaign for 139 was clear that their organizing would be strictly nonpartisan because they knew that abortion as a policy was more popular than any individual Democratic candidates, despite those Democrats being vocally pro-choice.
The strategy worked. The Arizona for Abortion Access Act passed with 417,427 more votes than former Vice President Kamala Harris received in Arizona, proving that egalitarian policies like reproductive rights are simply more popular than pro-choice candidates.
Healthcare Rising and Prop 139 won because they refused to partake in party politics and instead tailored their campaign toward fighting for issues that were resonant and supported in their constituency and across the political spectrum.
Our data tells us that egalitarian and redistributive measures are exceedingly popular with red and blue voters alike. So if Republican and Democrat voters both want many of the same things—policies that equalize rights, break down wealth inequality, and support the decision-making power of everyday people—why won’t politicians just give the people what they want?
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Pro-Voter Coalition Sues Over Trump Trying to 'Declare Election Rules by Executive Fiat'
"This executive order, based on nothing but years of disinformation, is blatantly unlawful and a naked attempt to suppress the votes of targeted communities," said LULAC's national president.
Mar 31, 2025
A pro-voter coalition on Monday sued to block U.S. President Donald Trump's recent executive order that critics warn would make it harder for tens of millions of eligible citizens to cast their ballots in state and federal elections.
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and State Democracy Defenders Fund (SDDF) sued the executive office of the president and members of Trump's administration in a Washington, D.C. federal court on behalf of three advocacy groups: the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Secure Families Initiative (SFI), and Arizona Students' Association (ASA).
"The president's executive order is an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans. It is simply not within the president's authority to set election rules by executive decree, especially when they would restrict access to voting in this way," said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at CLC.
"Donald Trump is attempting to wrongfully impede voting by millions of Americans with this latest unlawful executive order."
As the complaint puts it: "Under our Constitution, the president does not dictate election rules. States and Congress do... Through the order, the president attempts to exercise powers that the Constitution withholds from him and instead assigns to the states and to Congress. The order violates and subverts the separation of powers by lawlessly arrogating to the president authority to declare election rules by executive fiat."
Trump's order includes provisions enabling the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Department of Homeland Security to subpoena voting records for "list maintenance," restricting mail-in voting, and requiring the Election Assistance Commission to include documentary proof of citizenship on the federal voting form.
"Donald Trump is attempting to wrongfully impede voting by millions of Americans with this latest unlawful executive order. But it will not work. In America voters get to pick their president—presidents don't get to pick their voters, declared SDDF co-founder and executive chair Norm Eisen. "We are proud to stand up for the ability of every American voter to cast their ballots freely and fairly through this litigation."
Advocacy group leaders detailed how provisions in Trump's order would impact various communities if the directive isn't struck down.
"Military families, veterans, caregivers, and overseas voters deserve secure access to the very democracy we serve to protect—no matter where we're stationed or how we serve," said SFI executive director Sarah Streyder. "This new order would mean that the veteran who is a full-time caretaker at home, who has done everything right, may now be shut out of the ballot box due to outdated paperwork."
"This new order would mean that the military family stationed on the other side of the world from home, who crossed every t and dotted every i—their military ID will no longer suffice, and due to mail delays outside of their control, their ballot will never count," Streyder warned.
Roman Palomares, LULAC's national president, declared that "this executive order, based on nothing but years of disinformation, is blatantly unlawful and a naked attempt to suppress the votes of targeted communities—disproportionately impacting the Latino community."
"We are proud to join this coalition seeking to stop the effort to silence the voice and votes of the U.S. electorate—and particularly of voters of color," Palomares continued. "Our democracy depends on all voters feeling confident that they can vote freely and that their vote will be counted accurately."
Trump orders states to open voter files to Musk. Exec Order will cost 21 million their vote. ▶️ Get the full story: www.gregpalast.com/trump-execut...
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— Greg Palast (@gregpalast.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Kyle Nitschke, co-executive director of Arizona Students' Association, highlighted that some states have imposed voter suppression laws similar to Trump's executive order (EO).
"The Arizona Students' Association has seen firsthand what these egregious citizenship requirements really are, an attempt to suppress the vote. In Arizona we have a dual-track federal registration system, and the voters being affected by citizenship requirements are college students registering to vote for the first time, unsheltered voters, and Native voters, Nitschke said. "There are already extensive citizenship checks in place when registering to vote, Trump's EO is a clear attack on our voting rights. Our student members believe we should live in a country where it's accessible and convenient to be a part of democracy."
The Associated Press noted that "Monday's lawsuit against Trump's elections order could be just the first of many challenges. Other voting rights advocates have said they're considering legal action, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic attorney Marc Elias. Several Democratic state attorneys general have said they are looking closely at the order and suspect it is illegal."
Monday evening, the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced that they also filed a suit against the order in the D.C. court. They are represented by Elias Law Group.
"This executive order is an unconstitutional power grab from Donald Trump that attacks vote by mail, gives DOGE sensitive personal information, and makes it harder for states to run their own free and fair elections," they said in a joint statement. "It will even make it harder for military members serving overseas and married women who have changed their name to have their votes count."
"Donald Trump and DOGE are doing this as an attempt to rationalize their repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories and set the groundwork to throw out legal votes and ignore election outcomes they do not like," they added. "It's anti-American and Democrats are using every tool at our disposal—including taking Trump to court—to stop this illegal overreach that undermines our democracy."
The pro-voter lawsuits are also among several legal challenges to Trump's long list of executive actions since January 20. As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, the National Treasury Employees Union filed a federal suit in the same D.C. court over Trump's recent order that aims to strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government workers.
It's not just the Trump administration that's working to make it more difficult for Americans to participate in democracy. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are also planning to hold a vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act this week.
"If the bill passes, more than 21 million Americans could be blocked from voting," the Brennan Center for Justice warned on social media Monday. "The SAVE Act would be the first voter suppression bill ever passed by Congress. Lawmakers should be protecting the freedom to vote—not restricting it. We urge Congress to reject the SAVE Act."
This article has been updated to include the Democratic lawsuit.
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