by Garrett FriskArizona's Corporation Commission is a five-member body tasked with regulating public utilities, similar to the offices of Public Service Commission and Public Utilities Commission found in other states. Although the Corporation Commission is relatively obscure, it has launched political careers in the past; Kris Mayes, the current Arizona Attorney General, was once chair of the Corporation Commission. Three seats on the Corporation Commission will be up for election in 2024; here's who has declared their campaign: Among Democrats, engineer Jonathan Hill and attorney Derek Faraldo are in the race. Hill, who works at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility, ran for a seat on the corporation commission in 2022 but dropped out before the primary. Faraldo, meanwhile, is a former teacher who now works for the U.S. Army Reserve as a judges' advocate. Hill's campaign website can be found here, while Faraldo's website can be found here. Anna Tovar, the only Democrat on the Corporation Commission, is up for re-election in 2024, but has yet to declare her candidacy. Declared Republicans in the race include Rene Lopez, a former at-large member of the Chandler city council, and Bryce Miller, a field engineer. Lopez, who also served as Chandler's vice mayor, ran for Arizona's 4th congressional district in 2022, polling 14.21% of the vote for a third-place finish in a field of five candidates; Kelly Cooper won with 28.39% of the vote ahead of a 56-44 loss to Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton in the general election. Meanwhile, Miller declared his candidacy on LinkedIn several months ago. It appears that neither candidate has established a campaign website, though Lopez does have a campaign Facebook page. Additionally, Republican incumbent Lea Márquez Peterson has confirmed that she will run for re-election. Márquez Peterson's website can be found here. However, she may face a tough fight in the primary after a fellow Republican commissioner, Jim O'Connor, endorsed a different candidate, Mesa school board member Rachel Walden. O'Connor, the current chair of the Corporation Commission, is up for re-election in 2024, and does not appear to have publicly said if he's running. If he does run, that would mean he's trying to box out Márquez Peterson; the two have sparred publicly in the past, with Márquez Peterson refusing to vote for O'Connor as chairman earlier this year because she objected to his claims of election fraud. Walden was also endorsed by two other Republicans on the commission, Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers, as well as former commissioner Justin Olson, state senator David Farnsworth, and state representatives Justin Heap, Barbara Parker, and Jacqueline Parker. Her campaign website can be found here. Finally, there's Richard Grayson, an author and frequent candidate who has run for office in multiple states and under multiple parties. Grayson, who once served as co-chair of the Pinal County Green Party, is now a Democrat, but is running under the No Labels Party as a "performance art piece" intended to protest No Labels, which he sees as an effort to pull votes away from Joe Biden and get Donald Trump elected. Under Arizona election law, No Labels has no authority to prevent Grayson from running under their party's banner, even though the party does not want to run candidates for any office besides president. Grayson does not seem to have established an online campaign presence. Comments are closed.
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