'Dark money' pours into Arizona Republican primary

• The six-way race for governor in Arizona's Republican primary is one of the hottest gubernatorial races in the nation.
• The winner of the Republican primary will face Democrat Fred DuVal in the general election.
• Early voting has begun. Primary election day is Aug. 26.

Editor's note:This story continues an occasional series, Shadow Campaigns, to shed light on outside spending in this year's election. Operating with fewer restrictions on donations and expenditures than candidate campaigns, these groups are attempting to sway voters by spending record amounts, in some cases more than the candidates themselves.

Pick up your mail or turn on the TV and this is what you'll learn about the leading Republican candidates for governor:

Doug Ducey got rich on the backs of taxpayers and failed Cold Stone Creamery franchisees. Christine Jones is Hillary Clinton's biggest fan. And Scott Smith has a long-running bromance with President Barack Obama.

Outside groups had poured $1.9 million into the competitive gubernatorial primary as of Aug. 5, fueling the barrage of ominously voiced TV spots and glossy mailers that have attempted to write new story lines about three of Arizona's would-be governors who are leading in the polls.

The source of the money, and motives of the deep pockets supplying it, isn't always clear. Most of the outside groups seeking to influence voters aren't required to disclose where their money comes from.

In the wake of U.S. Supreme Court rulings lifting contribution limits and disclosure requirements for certain political groups, candidates face a new reality in which they have an increasingly difficult time controlling their own message.

Such has been the case for Ducey, Jones and Smith, who find themselves on the defensive, drafting talking points to counter attacks from outside groups with patriotic names that can pop up overnight.

Jones and Smith say Ducey is linked to the groups attacking them. They connect him via his political ally, Republican consultant Sean Noble, a veteran of the billionaire Koch brothers' "dark money" network.

Noble, who supports Ducey, has connections to four of the five groups running ads against Smith and Jones.

"There's no doubt that these are all related to Sean Noble and (his firm) DC London, and Ducey has had a relationship with Sean Noble and DC London — that's the worst-kept secret in the world," Smith said. "The fact that Doug Ducey has been completely silent means he supports it (attack ads funded by outside groups). To me, that's shameful."

But Ducey and Noble say there is no connection between the candidate and the outside groups' activities in this race.

Three of the groups, Veterans for a Strong America, 60 Plus Association and Legacy Foundation Action Fund, are 501(c)(4) non-profits — named for the section of the Internal Revenue Service code that governs their activities — and can keep their donors secret.

Two other groups, Better Leaders for Arizona and Conservative Leadership for Arizona, are political-action committees that must disclose detailed summaries of their contributions and expenditures.

The next fundraising report is due four days before the Aug. 26 primary election, long after many Arizona voters will have returned early ballots.

"It's come to these outside groups to trash candidates, to do the dirty work for campaigns that campaigns kind of hesitate to do," said Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California-Irvine law school. "... A candidate or a party that's seen as mudslinging or being negative can face negative repercussions from voters, so it falls to the outside groups to do this sort of dirty work."

The negative advertising can quickly shape voters' minds before candidates can respond.

Even when candidates do fight back, the negative messages already may have done their damage.

Six Republicans are vying for their party's gubernatorial nomination: Secretary of State Ken Bennett, Ducey, Jones, former California Congressman Frank Riggs, Smith and former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

The advertisements' negative overtones have blunted the candidates' own narratives.

Ducey wants voters to see him as a successful onetime CEO of the Arizona-based ice-cream company who can replicate that success in state government. Jones, the former GoDaddy executive, is running as an outsider who isn't beholden to entrenched interests in the state. And Smith, a two-term mayor of Mesa, tells voters he'll do for the state what he did for his city: create jobs, improve its image and work across party lines for the good of the state.

Jones said the ads funded by outside groups discourage successful business leaders from running for public office.

"Nobody wants to deal with this crap," she said.

Many from out of state

One of the first attacks on Jones came from 1,400 miles away.

Veterans for a Strong America, a Sioux Falls, S.D.-based political group, ran ads and sent mailers, highlighting Jones' complimentary remarks about Clinton and suggesting Jones was unconcerned about the 2012 attacks on a U.S. consul in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. Clinton was secretary of State at the time of the attacks.

Jones says she "absolutely does not support" Clinton; any remarks she made comparing Clinton with her successor as secretary of State, John Kerry, were taken out of context.

Another ad — this one attacking Smith — knocks him for supporting an international treaty that seeks to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and compared him with Obama and former Vice President Al Gore. That ad came from even farther away, the Virginia-based 60 Plus Association.

60 Plus Association calls itself a nonpartisan seniors-advocacy group on its website. The group has spent about $425,000 to advocate for the defeat of Smith and Jones.

Another out-of-state group, the Iowa-based Legacy Foundation Action Fund, ran an ad that claimed Smith, as former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, was "Obama's favorite mayor."

Smith writes off attempts to tie him to Obama as election-year foolishness. He emphasizes his opposition to the president's Affordable Care Act.

These far-flung groups had at least one common denominator, which Smith and Jones have been quick to point out: Noble.

Noble's consulting firm produced Veterans for a Strong America's anti-Jones ads.

Noble's relationship with the group began in 2012, the same year Veterans for a Strong America received $937,000 from a non-profit advocacy group that listed Noble as its principal officer, the Center to Protect Patient Rights. Joel Arends, the group's chairman, has said the group originally hired Noble's firm because he was impressed with its work.

The Center to Protect Patient Rights also gave $2.6 million to the 60 Plus Association in 2012, tax records show.

Noble told The Arizona Republic in an e-mail that DC London has consulted and produced ads for the Legacy Foundation Action Fund, though he did not say if he was involved with the Smith-Obama one. The group did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment.

Documents also tie Noble to another group running negative ads in the governor's race, this one based here. Noble is chairman of Conservative Leadership for Arizona. The group has spent about $302,544 — $208,000 to promote Ducey and about $94,000 on attacks against Jones and Smith.

David Berman, a senior research fellow at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy, said voters should scrutinize any attack ad and question why groups, especially those from out of state, are so concerned with the outcome of a race in Arizona.

"There's nothing enlightening or educational for the voters in these ads, and in the process a lot of the money (to fund them) is coming from people who don't even live here," said Berman, who has studied the influence of anonymous political spending. "There are ideological groups that want to make sure the conservative they want gets elected. It's a real dark-money network."

Gerry Scimeca, spokesman for 60 Plus Association, said the group doesn't consider itself to be among the "outside influences" in the governor's race because it represents "more than 167,000 senior supporters in Arizona."

"We do not disclose the names of our more than 300,000 donors nationally, which includes more than 4,300 active contributors in AZ," Scimeca wrote in an e-mail. "We are not required to disclose our donors and until the law is amended we will not consider doing so."

Free-speech defense

Noble defends anonymous political speech, saying it's protected by the First Amendment.

"The Founding Fathers understood the importance of anonymous speech, especially when it came to government retaliation," Noble wrote in the e-mail to The Republic. "Anonymous speech protects those exercising their free speech rights from targeting and retaliation by government regulators at the state and federal level."

Voters benefit because messages and issues can be debated on their merits: "It is a routine ploy of liberals to try to take the focus off of what is being said and make the discussion all about who is doing the talking."

Noble said he met Ducey a number of years ago when he worked as chief of staff for then-Arizona U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, whom Ducey also supported.

Noble considers Ducey a friend, but the two don't socialize, he said.

Noble said he informally advised Ducey during his 2010 bid for state treasurer. And in 2012, Noble's DC London consulted on the Ducey-chaired "No on 204" effort to oppose a penny sales tax to fund education.

Asked why he's supporting Ducey, Noble wrote, "Doug Ducey is the right person at the right time for Arizona's future. He brings invaluable experience to the office and has a conservative vision for moving the state forward."

Smith accused Noble of character assassination and called his reasoning for supporting anonymously funded groups "the biggest crock in the world."

"People like ... Sean Noble who operate in secrecy and then try to couch it as a First Amendment deal, to me, that's disgusting," Smith said. "I think voters, in general, should care about who's buying elections."

Jones, who hosted a telephone town hall and connected with more than 200,000 voters to address the claims against her, echoed Smith.

"Political speech is one of the most important types of speech ... but I also think it is important for voters to know who's persuading them," she said. "We've stayed extremely positive. We've tried to go directly to voters with the truth. We'd rather focus on things that make a difference … rather than be defending against false attacks."

Striking back

Amid the withering outside attacks, Jones' allies have decided to strike back. Better Leaders for Arizona, a pro-Jones political entity, has spent more than any outside group involved in the governor's race.

In recent weeks, the group has spent about $1.2 million — including $775,000 — to assail Ducey for failing to "take responsibility for his dark money cronies" smearing Jones "with false attacks." They've also hit him for his past delinquent property taxes, traffic violations, and the failure rate among Cold Stone Creamery franchises.

Ducey's campaign wrote in a letter to station managers that the ad contained defamatory information.

The pro-Jones group recently unleashed a second round of ads, asserting taxpayers were on the hook when franchisee loans backed by the federal government went unpaid when the businesses failed: "A costly taxpayer bailout," a sinister voice says. Ducey has said that while some Cold Stone franchisees failed, the overwhelming majority succeeded in the U.S. and abroad.

Better Leaders for Arizona is mostly bankrolled by GoDaddy Group founder Bob Parsons, who said last week he donated $1 million to the group and may give more.

Parsons said he did not know if others had given to the Paradise Valley-based group, which will be required by law to disclose its donors on Aug. 22.

Virginia Simpson, the group's treasurer, sought to distance Better Leaders for Arizona from the anonymously funded players in the race.

She said the group is being transparent, pointing out that its key financial backer, Parsons, disclosed his involvement and his motivations.

"Everybody wishes there was no negativity in politics," Simpson said. "But if there are negative facts, should we gloss over them and pretend they're not there?"

Spending on governor's race

Outside groups, including non-profits that don't have to disclose donors as well as political committees that do, had spent $1.9 million in the governor's race as of Aug. 5. Much of the spending has been to attack the three leading Republican candidates, Doug Ducey, Christine Jones and Scott Smith.