Conservatives Need a New Way of Doing Local Politics

Arizona conservatives view utility elections and other local contests the way progressives do, which only plays into progressive hands.

On Monday, the Salt River Project (SRP) Board of Directors made the results of last week’s Board and Council elections official. While SRP released unofficial results last Wednesday, the board’s official recognition transforms the election from a niche interest of political junkies to a profound change in how many Valley residents get their water and energy.

I am not a landowner, and was therefore ineligible to vote. But as a Tempe resident, the SRP election has suddenly captured my attention. Not as a window into the midterms, or a glance into changing demographics, but because it will result in real policy decisions that will affect the lifestyle choices I make daily.

As a public utility company serving large chunks of the Valley, SRP’s jurisdiction is split between the Association, which manages water resources, and the District, which oversees power generation and distribution to over one million customers. The District is in turn governed by a Council, which votes on the bylaws that regulate internal conduct, and a Board that votes on rates, contracts, and resource management policy. Thus, the District Board has a large influence on energy policy, and their decisions can affect utility bills, blackout and brownout likelihood, and whether energy comes from fossil fuels or renewable resources. Even their most technocratic decisions have political implications. As such, SRP candidates are not mere administrators but are often politically aligned.

In this and past elections, several candidates have run under the banner of the “Clean Energy Team,” which was backed by the Sierra Club and out-of-state celebrities like Jane Fonda. They support a fast transition away from fossil fuels and charging data centers higher rates for their energy consumption.

Arizona is rich in renewable resources, and our utility companies should take advantage of them. But this infrastructure is not built overnight. If these voices dominate the board and are not balanced by other voices that focus on consumer prices and the economic growth that can support new investments, it’s hard to imagine any outcome other than rising energy costs and higher utility bills. And for Arizonans already facing a heightened cost of living, that is a hard pill to swallow. Conservatives should stand up for them and push to keep prices low.

Chris Dobson and Barry Paceley, two candidates committed to keeping costs down, won the SRP Presidency and Vice Presidency, respectively. They were backed by Turning Point Action (TPA), and their victory is a testament to TPA’s ballot-chasing campaign. But down ballot, candidates from the “Clean Energy Team” won a majority of the District Board for the first time in SRP history. While the President can vote as an ex officio member of the Board, the Vice President can only vote in his absence. And though the President supervises SRP officers and conduct, most of the executive management is appointed by the Board. As a result, the new majority will likely be able to implement their agenda. As Paceley reflected, “We are saddened that several of our highly qualified candidates were not elected who would’ve been instrumental in the future success of Salt River Project.”

These results do not represent a massive shift in Arizona voting patterns, as SRP’s jurisdiction is, after all, in the urban core of the Valley—a traditionally Democratic constituency. But they do show that conservatives are struggling to adjust their tactics to the nuances of local politics. Ultimately, Arizona conservatives view utility elections and other local contests the way progressives do, which only plays into progressive hands. If they want to see better results, conservatives will need a new strategy.

Arizona conservatives are playing a progressive’s game

The most important factor in the SRP election is that, despite increased attention this year, it was a low-turnout election. That makes it very different from national or even statewide campaigns.

SRP spokesperson Jennifer Schurich revealed that only 36,000 ballots were cast. That’s a fourfold increase from 2024! But SRP serves over 1.1 million customers. While not every customer is eligible to vote, given a usual turnout rate of 5% in SRP elections, a fourfold increase should yield a 2026 turnout of no more than 20%. That is still lower than what you typically see in midterm and primary elections.

That is why debates about whether the SRP electorate leans Republican or Democratic are largely a distraction. No grouping of 36,000 voters can be representative of the whole SRP electorate. Whereas national elections are decided by winning over swing voters, SRP elections and many other local elections are decided by the unusual dynamics that motivate people to turn out in ultra-low-profile contests.

To understand these dynamics, consider a term that left-of-center pundits have been throwing around recently: “the groups.” An apparent staple of D.C. lingo, the phrase appears in two telling incidents described by blogger Matthew Yglesias, in which national Democratic staffers used it. After the 2020 election, an aide to Chuck Schumer reported to Yglesias that Schumer had privately conceded that comprehensive immigration reform was dead. When Yglesias asked whether he would consider standalone immigration bills, the aide responded “Well, it depends on what the groups think.” Then, after the 2024 election, Yglesias asked another Senate aide why Democrats didn’t attempt the permitting reform that Joe Manchin wanted in 2022, who responded that “the enviro groups killed it.”

These mysterious “groups” are progressive advocacy organizations, usually nonprofits dedicated to a specific interest, such as environmentalism or gun control. They can exert significant pressure within the Democratic coalition on behalf of their special interests. But as Samuel Hammond notes, their main function is to “grease the wheel of party cohesion by mobilizing activists, lobbyists, pollsters, and grassroots outreach whenever a big vote is afoot.” What gives them an advantage is a strong understanding of institutions combined with an unusually high level of engagement in low-profile issues.

These groups were clearly present in the SRP election, with the “Clean Energy Team” receiving support from the Sierra Club, the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, feminist group Arizona List, and union ally Worker Power PAC. These groups already have a long history of mobilizing in response to political moments that most people ignore. Worker Power PAC has moved to block major developments in Glendale, Scottsdale, and, most famously, the failed Coyotes Stadium proposal in Tempe. And the Sierra Club is an infamous organization even among Democrats: In their book Abundance, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein lament how the California Environmental Quality Act lobbied for by the Sierra Club, “became a potent weapon against the construction of new homes.”

So, is the solution for conservatives to build their own groups? The SRP election shows that it’s not that simple. Just as progressives have done, conservatives have built the infrastructure necessary to mobilize supporters for low-profile issues. The board candidates opposed to the Clean Energy Team were backed by just the kind of conservative organizations you would expect to replicate the success of the “groups.” Yet despite conservatives outspending this array of progressive groups by 10 to 1, these candidates still lost. Clearly, the power of progressive groups comes from something other than money or organizational structure.

What makes progressive groups so powerful is the activists, lawyers, and policy analysts who staff them. These professionals are able to navigate complex institutions and procedures, identify lobbying opportunities others might overlook, and organize activism effectively. But increasingly, they are drawn from a narrow social class, and as Hammond notes, “there is nothing to prevent them from self-organizing” around their own values.¹ Research suggests that graduates from elite universities who choose to work in the nonprofit sector are the most ideologically committed of their classmates. In fact, when Ralph Nader first pioneered these groups during the 1960s, an entire third of Harvard Law School’s 1968 graduating class applied to work for his activist organization.

This creates a catch-22 for conservatives. When conservative organizations treat low-profile elections as a turnout game the way progressives do, even well-organized campaigns are more likely to mobilize the highly engaged activist networks of progressive groups than their own bases. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in the SRP election. While conservatives deployed an immense get-out-the-vote effort, their participation galvanized progressive groups to do the work of “motivating many left-wing voters to come to the polls.” One 55-year-old Tempe resident told the New York Times that he had never voted before because “it never mattered before.”

Ultimately, the advantages that make the “groups” successful are unavailable to conservatives. This is mostly a good thing. Democrats have grown frustrated with their own groups, whose ability to pressure the coalition on behalf of their special interests has made it “harder to get complex projects done.” As the example from Yglesias shows, the groups prevented the Democrats from adopting a popular permitting reform agenda. Meanwhile, Republicans now appear to have an advantage over low-engagement voters who decide national elections—a testament to the populist movement that they have built in the past decade.

But if conservatives want to influence policy decisions made by SRP and other local bodies, they will have to adopt a different strategy. When conservatives play the “groups” game, they only trigger the progressive activist class into action. The good news is that there are proven ways that populist movements can withstand group resistance on low-profile issues.

How conservatives can make the most of the results—and keep costs down

While the “Clean Energy Team” has a majority of the SRP District Board, their agenda is not set in stone. Conservatives still have a say in what the board’s policies will look like: Supporting growth to fund renewable investments or discouraging development with unequal rates; lowering rates by building up supply or increasing rates through carbon reduction mandates. Maintaining a voice in these debates will help conservatives learn lessons on influencing local bodies, lessons they can take to the equally difficult environment of low-profile elections. Here are some principles that can guide them:

Bring “Secret Congress” to the Valley: D.C. analysts have started floating a “Secret Congress” hypothesis suggesting that bipartisan action happens “not despite a lack of public attention, but because of it.” Whether it was the FAST Act on infrastructure under Obama, the Anti-Money Laundering Act under the first Trump administration, or the CHIPS and Science Act under Biden, legislation with bipartisan support tends to focus on low-salience issues. When issues fly under the radar and don’t polarize, policymakers can focus on their relationships with one another and explore possibilities for reform.

Fortunately, we already know those relationships exist in the SRP Board. Dobson and Paceley are veteran leaders within the utility company and know how to hammer out a compromise. Dobson has characterized their position as: “We’re not against renewables, but we’re just [in favor of] a balanced approach to make sure that we incorporate it properly where we can maintain our reliability.” This frames a policy of growth and affordability as a common-sense strategy rather than a culture-war victory for conservatives. And this can also help during elections in SRP’s urban core: The typical Tempe resident may not support the national GOP brand, but they still care about utility prices. Focus the election on the issue that matters, rather than tying it to a high-visibility agenda in D.C.

The most important takeaway is to “avoid making your issue code as highly partisan.” It is by this principle that the YIMBY (“Yes In My Back Yard”) movement has been able to build a bipartisan movement in favor of deregulating barriers to housing development. Both sides can benefit from increased housing supply, and for that reason, housing reform has passed in red and blue states alike. But YIMBY also teaches that, as much as it helps to fly under the radar, you still need some attention. As Caleb Watney from the bipartisan Institute for Progress notes, policymakers still need to be convinced that an issue is “worth prioritizing over other issues and aligned with their preexisting goals.” Conservatives need to demonstrate that voters care enough to see the change they are advocating for. At some point, conservatives will still have to win a debate over ideas, which leads to the next principle.

Educate When You Advocate: When the time for an election comes, ballot-chasing will not be enough. Instead, conservatives must take responsibility for educating voters about how SRP and other local bodies decide policy and how these seemingly small decisions can affect their daily lives. Reaching voters with this information will require an entrepreneurial approach to social media.

Zohran Mamdani’s populist campaign for New York City mayor is instructive here. During the primary, Mamdani found that many of the city’s progressive groups were actually arrayed against him—and in a twist of irony, the democratic socialist was opposed by most local unions! But Mamdani’s primary victory depended largely on viral videos that explained how otherwise obscure policies, such as food-truck permitting, were affecting New Yorkers, even identifying specific bills that could make a difference. Mamdani showed that local decisions and procedures can still be the focus of a populist campaign.

Unlike the “groups” game, this strategy comes with the advantage that progressives do not have a monopoly on social media talent. Conservatives can learn the tricks of modern messaging—authentic language, consistent posting, positive vibes—and focus that messaging on how local elections affect their wallets. If they do that, they can not only turn out their own base but also start competing with the “groups” in the fight to persuade high-engagement voters.

Dream Big on Energy: One way to win over the kind of voter that turns out in a low-profile election is to think outside the current polarized paradigm and latch on to a big idea. If the kind of voter mobilized by progressive “groups” is dissatisfied with conservatives’ opposition to a more rapid transition to renewables, conservatives should offer something bold that they support.

What, for instance, can SRP do to move in the direction of the massive desalination project proposed during Gov. Doug Ducey’s administration? Ducey’s original plan to construct desalination plants on the Sea of Cortez and pipelines feeding water into the state has faced budget cuts since Gov. Katie Hobbs took office. Conservatives should position themselves as a movement that provides long-term strategies for water supply and supports public works projects that honor the state’s legacy.

Besides desalination—largely a statewide issue—conservatives interested in SRP should be asking bold questions. Should nuclear power be on the agenda? Can SRP promote a battery revolution to support solar? How might the EV industry contribute to the transition to renewables? Answering these questions allows conservatives to move beyond mere opposition to rival agendas and towards a positive vision for the state’s future.

Arizona Needs an Independent Identity: The core thread running through these principles is that Arizonan conservatives need to defend and promote an Arizonan identity that diverse interest groups can rally behind. Whether you’re taking a “Secret Congress” approach to the new SRP Board, trying to sell a Tempe resident on bold ideas, or teaching Arizonans about their institutions, policy influence will depend on having a cultural consensus that conservatives can appeal to. This is where the work of the policy wonk ends, and the work of the historian (and perhaps the Virgilian poet) begins. Conservatives should highlight the unique values that inspire Arizonans and connect present ambitions to the state’s heritage. On top of this, they should be bold in imagining what a thriving Arizona in the 21st century would look like—what Arizonans have inherited from their past and how they are taking it forward.

For too long, conservatives have treated local politics as a base mobilization game just as progressives do. Because of their sophisticated activist network, progressives can get away with this in a way that conservatives cannot. But local politics is not simply the domain of the most highly-engaged voters and the activist groups that mobilize them. It is also a world of policymaker relationships, effective communication, bold ideas, and shared cultural values. Conservatives should harness the whole gambit of strategies available to them. The SRP election presents an opportunity to experiment with new methods of policy influence and offer Arizonans a brand of conservatism that responds to the pressing issues close to home.

Craig Ruiz is a fellow at the 1912 Institute. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership from Arizona State University and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Politics from the University of Oxford.

1. As I concluded in an essay for an Oxford politics course, “there is no reason to expect that policy talent can only act if hired by firms funded by contributors; they can also act on their own. … For this reason, Bowens and Willie argue that policy now reflects the preferences of educated elites, especially those who go into the non-profit sector and therefore earn less capital than economic elites. At the very least, this demonstrates that economic elites are not the only individuals who can take advantage of public interest firms, nor are they the ones who most clearly benefit from a policymaking process influenced by public interest firms.”