One of the things we independent voters cannot stand to see in politics is dark money operations.
I wasn't familiar with Mario Diaz of Friends of Arizona til today, and after my conversation with him I can honestly equate him to being a corporate servant instead of a servant to the people. I liken Mario Diaz to Jaime Molera / Ruben Alvarez (two vendidos) who were later found out to be lobbyists for the Private Prison Industry via CCA -- a huge corporate entity. They make money from prisons who put our gente in prison.
Apparently Mario Diaz doesn't care about Independent voters in Arizona even though we are now the largest voting bloc in the state (and growing). I was trying to ascertain information with regard to his attack ads with regard to the Catherine Miranda and Lydia Hernandez campaign, and he didn't feel he had to answer questions as it pertains to key swing independent voters within our group.
Mario Diaz made a bad mistake. Independent voters are not people to be taken lightly and in fact, we are independent voters because we are sick of partisanship, gridlock and dirty politicians.
I called Mario Diaz, because I believe in giving a person the benefit of the doubt in an effort to do some fact finding -- but Diaz was not interested in answering my questions. [Note: Corporations may want to distance themselves from Mario Diaz who is making enemies with those organizing the growing independent voting leaders.] Therefore, I now have no other option but to hyperlink to inconsistencies and dark money operations in our state and help shine some light in order for Independent voters to be more informed in Arizona elections.
For the record, the State of Arizona has had a problem with dark money operations. A notable person to remember is Sean Noble who is known as the Dark Money Man. Essentially Sean Noble moved the Kochs’ cash into politics and made millions.
Guess who Sean Noble endorsed? You guessed it: Mr. Mario Diaz.
Here's the tweet below:
Latino leaders in our community told me Mario Diaz is also in support of Doug Little and Tom Forese who are running for Corporation Commissioner positions. The purpose of my call into Diaz was to see if that was true, but he told me he didn't feel as if he should have to answer any of my questions. That said, it is common knowledge that both Little and Forese are huge advocates for APS.
According to Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Central, there is:
Secret campaign to elect Forese/Little nears $1 million
".... APS officials won't say whether they're behind the stealth campaign, a campaign that is totally legal and totally scary.
To think that APS could be secretly funding the campaign to choose who will regulate APS.
It's startling that no one on the Corporation Commission seems to be too exercised about what's going on here. Corporation Commission Chairman Bob Stump seems to be more concerned about out-of-state rooftop solar companies sinking money into the race."
Is Mario Diaz on contract with APS?
It appears Mario Diaz is running "Friends of Arizona" IEs on behalf of APS targeting races opposite of many good Democrats like Martin Quezada.
Does Mario Diaz have any idea how Lydia Hernandez refused to apologize to the LGBT community when her campaign supporter made fun of gays and lesbians?
More importantly, is APS condoning LGBT bigotry if they are giving money for IE attacks that aid campaigns who make fun of gay and lesbian voters?
Is APS essentially helping Lydia Hernandez via IEs when mass mailers are sent out attacking her opponent because she voted in support of HB 2485 in 2013? If you look at this HB2485, you will see it stands to benefit large corporations such as APS, that essentially reduces their accountability, transparency and liability. It prevents audits from being disclosed to the public so that ordinary voters like you and me will not hold APS accountable.
We are making a commitment to keep our eyes on Mario Diaz and corporations like APS so that we can expose their dark money and tactics for the informed independent voter in Arizona.
