Camelback Strategy Group (CSG), a consulting firm associated with the moderate and McCain wing of the Republican Party, appears to be aligning itself with an effort to institute ranked-choice voting in Arizona. Matt Kenney, a partner and vice president with the group and former associate of the late Senator John McCain, sent an email from his CSG account on April 24 to undisclosed recipients stating that Save Democracy Arizona is looking for a political director to oversee a ballot initiative effort for ranked-choice voting.
The Kari Lake War Room Twitter account tweeted a copy of the email, stating, “RINO Consulting firm Camelback Strategies goes all in for Ranked Choice Voting. They can’t get their establishment candidates elected anymore. So they’re just going to rig the primaries. This would be the death of free & fair elections in Arizona. And it must be stopped.”
The account added, “From the brains that brought you: Let’s steal 20 billion dollars from Ed Robson & then help elect Katie Hobbs because we’re sore losers.” CSG represented moderate Republican Karrin Taylor-Robson in her gubernatorial race against Lake, funded almost entirely by Taylor-Robson’s wealthy developer husband. CSG came under criticism last fall for a PAC it ran, Defending Arizona Values, spending very little of the money raised on actual candidates. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer runs a PAC supporting GOP election fraud deniers, contributing $45,000 to Defending Arizona Values.
The email from Kenney was titled “Know anyone?” and appeared to contain a standard job description, which began, “Save Democracy is hiring a detail-obsessive political director to oversee the collection of almost 1 million signatures for an election-reform ballot measure.” It described rank-choice voting, “SDAZ is seeking to place on the 2024 ballot a measure that would implement Final Five Voting (FFV) in Arizona elections.”
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times