‘Winning friends and influencing people’
Senate hopeful Lamon spreads around personal cash in Republican races
Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Jim Lamon is charting a course unlike any other in recent years.
The one-time energy business executive is throwing his wallet behind various lower-level Republican candidates, conservative groups and GOP organizations around the state while conspicuously tossing cash near former President Donald Trump, who indicated this week an endorsement is forthcoming in the wide-open race.
Lamon’s spending during the 2022 cycle is part of an effort to elevate the political profile of a man most people hadn’t heard of six months ago.
An Alabama native with ties to Utah, Lamon ran an Arizona-based solar energy company before its sale late last year to Koch Engineered Solutions. He launched his Senate campaign nearly a year ago as a Trump-aligned candidate who hopes to defeat Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in the Nov. 8 general election.
Four other Republicans are seeking the GOP Senate nomination, but none of them is using their money to build their political presence like Lamon.
On top of the tens of thousands of dollars he has contributed to national congressional candidates and groups this election cycle, Lamon has donated at least $80,000 over the past two years to conservative statewide or legislative candidates from Snowflake to Yuma. The cash makes him a top donor in some of the lower-profile races.
Lamon has given an estimated $15,000 personally to Republican grassroots groups, not including the several thousands of dollars his campaign has paid in fees, event sponsorships and other contributions to those organizations, an Arizona Republic analysis of state campaign finance data shows.
In all, he has personally contributed an estimated $100,000 to those statewide candidates and groups since last year, The Republic found. His four GOP opponents have given a combined $7,430 to GOP candidates or groups.
Separately, before Lamon’s former company was sold, Depcom Power gave more than $670,000 to the state Republican Party and GOP groups from Maricopa, Coconino and Gila counties.
Lamon’s generous spending while largely self-funding his own Senate campaign is an unusual approach that will soon face the test: GOP primary voters.
“I think that it’s him winning friends and influencing people — it’s really not more complicated than that,” said Republican consultant Kirk Adams, the former chief of staff to Gov. Doug Ducey.
Campaign consultants familiar with Arizona’s political battlefield said the donations reveal a man with little connection to the state’s broader Republican
landscape trying to quickly establish himself as a force to help his party widen its hold on the state Legislature and retake Congress.
Some political contributions list him as a Utahn, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog. He has lived in Arizona since around 2009, according to his campaign.
In a few short years, Lamon has helped infuse the Arizona Republican Party with cash and paid for security costs tied to the 2021 state Senate-ordered review of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 election. The security costs for that GOP-led recount have not been fully disclosed.
Lamon has said he helped bankroll a voter-registration program ahead of the Aug. 2 primary election where his name will appear at the top of the ticket along with those of his GOP challengers. The results of that effort are unclear.
“Having it all come in the middle of your own campaign is unusual but he also does have a record of being a donor in other states,” said GOP consultant Chad Heywood, the former executive director of the state GOP.
“If you attend events, if you donate to groups, it doesn’t buy you their support, but it does demonstrate you’re respectful of their organization’s cause, or the influence they wield,” he said.
Amy Lannon Wilhite, a Lamon spokesperson, said he has supported conservative candidates and causes for years — long before his run for the U.S. Senate.
Lamon, a 2020 Trump elector who has claimed improprieties in the presidential election that Trump lost, has given tens of thousands of dollars to national and statewide candidates and groups over the past decade or so, but had a relatively low profile compared with other better-known GOP donors.
Wilhite said Lamon’s strategy to win the high-profile Senate GOP primary relies in part on his mobilization of grassroots voters.
“Jim has made it clear that his U.S. Senate campaign is not just about him, which is why he continues to support America First candidates and conservative organizations and will fight everyday to build a coalition that’s committed to both a prosperous Arizona and pushing back on the Biden-Kelly agenda that is causing massive inflation, refusing to secure our borders, and undermining American values,” Wilhite said in a written statement.
The Senate race seems to be centering on three of the five main candidates, none of whom has matched Lamon’s personal financial stake: Mark Brnovich, who has served as Arizona attorney general since 2015, and two relative political unknowns, Lamon and venture capitalist Blake Masters, who worked for billionaire Trump ally Peter Thiel.
Polling suggests Brnovich holds a narrow lead, in part because of relatively strong name identification with voters, but many potential GOP voters
remain undecided.
Michael “Mick” McGuire, the retired adjutant general of the Arizona National Guard, just went up on television with his first ad in the race, hoping to gain more traction. Arizona Corporation Commissioner Justin Olson has little name identification.
Lamon entered the contest unknown. To overcome that, he has loaned his campaign about $13 million and is spending big on provocative television ads trying to catch the attention of voters — and the former president.
One ad featured a staged shootout with actors resembling Kelly and Democratic leaders. Another spot invoked “Let’s go, Brandon,” the conservative rallying cry that sanitizes an expletivelaced message for President Joe Biden. Last year, Lamon’s campaign ran a 30second border-security themed ad in New Jersey, where Trump summered at his golf club.
Lamon is deploying his personal wealth on the ground in Arizona, too.
He has spent some of his fortune largely in races for the state Legislature, attorney general and school superintendent.
Lamon gave $2,650 to state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, who is running for secretary of state. He gave $2,900 to former state Rep. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, who is running for the state Senate. Both spoke at “Stop the Steal” rallies and were at the U.S. Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the race for attorney general, Lamon gave $2,758 to Lacy Cooper, $2,650 to Rodney Glassman and $5,300 to Tiffany Shedd. And at the state Capitol, Lamon poured thousands into the campaign coffers of some of the most conservative incumbents and those who want to join them, from Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, to incumbent state Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale, to House hopeful Alexander Kolodin, an attorney who has represented the state GOP party.
Cory McGarr, a first-time candidate who hopes to win a seat in the state House, told The Republic he is grateful for the $2,650 Lamon gave to his campaign.
“We share a lot of the same values of America First and freedom and liberty, so it’s pretty easy to align with someone like that,” McGarr said.
Asked if he plans to back Lamon’s bid, McGarr said he doesn’t publicly endorse candidates until after primary races but is “very favorable to him and his cause.”
McGarr said Lamon did not ask for his support in the U.S. Senate race: “Not overtly, no.”
Lamon gave $2,500 to state Rep. Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, on Jan. 19, shortly after she was appointed to the seat. Days later, she was advertised as a speaker at an “America First Rally” that featured him and two national supporters as “special guests.” Lamon’s campaign website on April 4 announced Martinez’s endorsement of Lamon. She said she wanted “a U.S. Senator who is going to care more about the state of Arizona than he does himself.”
Lamon gave an early contribution of $172 to Republican Bob Lettieri’s bid for state treasurer after the men ran into each other at an event.
“He’s a generous man. He’s got a heart as big as Texas,” Lettieri said.
Before launching his bid for the U.S. Senate, Lamon gave thousands to various Republican candidates and officeholders, including Trump, then-Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and the Republican National Committee.
His former company and its employees, meanwhile, gave at least $1.3 million in recent years to national outside groups, the state GOP party and others seeking to influence voters in federal races, according to Open Secrets.
Lamon’s giving now is hyper-focused on Arizona, where doling out contributions in local races can have more impact than giving to a national group, campaign aide Stephen Puetz said.
“Through the process of running for office, he’s ... come to the conclusion that Republicans in the state of Arizona need a lot of help if they’re going to take back the state,” Puetz said. “That’s why he decided to plug in . ... It’s truly a passion project.”
In an unsettled race for the Senate this cycle, though, it will take more than deep pockets to win a state like Arizona, where Kelly has built a war chest of about $39 million and voters haven’t rewarded self-funded candidates, political experts said.
In 2006, multimillionaire Democratic developer Jim Pederson mounted a challenge to GOP Sen. Jon Kyl. It didn’t end well for Pederson, who recalled spending $20 million on the race. Half of the money was his.
In the summer of 2010, GOP gubernatorial candidate Buz Mills shattered records by spending about $3.2 million — most of it his own — on his bid to win his party’s nomination for governor. Though his resources eclipsed every other candidate in the race, he ended his campaign early and then-Gov. Jan Brewer went on to win a full term of her own.
Two years later, the late Wil Cardon spent millions of his own money in a failed bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2012. He lost to Flake.
“I can tell you as I proved in my race,” Pederson said. “Money doesn’t win political campaigns.”