Better Together’s Blank Check: Who’s Really Funding the PAC Attacking Barry Graham?

By Alexander Lomax

A New PAC, a Familiar Playbook

A political action committee called Better Together has spent more than $250,000 attacking three Scottsdale City Council candidates, and Scottsdale voters still don’t know who is paying for it. The committee filed with the state on June 5. Its first campaign finance report isn’t due until July 15, well after most mail ballots will already be cast. That timing is not an accident. It is a loophole, and it is the same kind of loophole Axon has exploited before.

Following the Money Trail Back to Axon

Better Together’s treasurer is a former Axon spokesman. That alone should raise eyebrows. But the pattern goes deeper. Axon Enterprise and CEO Rick Smith each poured $500,000 into Arizonans for a Better Future, a PAC that backed legislators who supported the so-called Axon Bill. Axon President Josh Isner added another $100,000. Those same PAC officers turned around and formed Better Together weeks later, this time aiming directly at Councilman Barry Graham, along with Bob Littlefield and Michelle Ugenti-Rita, three candidates who opposed handing Axon nearly 1,200 apartments it never needed.

Axon insists it isn’t directing the operation. Its spokesman calls Graham’s accusations “making stuff up.” But the financial report shows zero contributions from individuals, only corporate-style spending with no names attached. If this PAC has nothing to hide, it should have no problem disclosing its donors before ballots are due, not after.

Axon Rendering

The Real Story Isn’t Barry Graham. It’s Axon.

We’ve documented this company’s approach for years: a rezoning maneuver that shortchanged Arizona schools by tens of millions, a sham poll designed to manufacture support it doesn’t have, and a legislative end run built to cancel an election Axon knew it would lose. Axon has shown, repeatedly, that when residents stand in its way, its response isn’t to make a better case. It’s to spend until the opposition goes away.

Better Together fits the pattern precisely. Graham, Littlefield and Ugenti-Rita are the only three candidates who consistently opposed Axon’s apartment component. Attacking exactly those three, while hiding behind a reporting deadline, is not grassroots politics. It is a corporation trying to buy itself a compliant council, three votes at a time.

What Voters Deserve Before July 21

Scottsdale residents have a right to know whose money is funding the ads landing in their mailboxes. If Axon truly isn’t behind Better Together, it can prove that by pushing for immediate disclosure rather than hiding behind a filing deadline that conveniently falls after most ballots are cast. But they’re not going to, because there is no doubt that they are behind this. As such, voters should treat every “Bye Bye Barry” sign as exactly what the evidence suggests: another chapter in Axon’s long campaign to get what the people of Scottsdale have already told it, clearly and repeatedly, that they do not want.

They are trying to hijack our democracy. It is up to us to reject their efforts as forcefully as possible.

Axon CEO Rick Smith. Photo Credit: Jim Poulin, Phoenix Business Journal