Progressive PAC launches $1M campaign against ‘deceptive’ GOP-backed ballot propositions

The progressive PAC Will of the People is putting $1 million toward its campaign opposing four ballot propositions that Republican state legislators sent to voters this year. 

“Arizona voters will have the final say, and they deserve to know exactly what these measures would do before they cast their ballots,” Alison Marciniak, executive director of Progress Arizona, said in a statement announcing the campaign. “We’re going to make sure they have the information they need to reject these referrals and send a clear message at the ballot box.”

The campaign to vote down Prop. 142, Prop. 144, Prop. 318 and Prop. 320 is set to reach voters via mail, phone, door-knocking and digital ads from now through Nov. 3. 

“A group of power-hungry politicians has voted to put a set of highly deceptive propositions on your ballot this November,” Will of the People says on its website. “They want to make voting more difficult for Arizonans, hollow out our schools with funding cuts, and institute blanket mandates in school sports.” 

All of those propositions were sent to the ballot by Republicans on party-line votes on the last day of this year’s legislative session, some in the early morning hours after legislators worked through the night. 

Proposition 142

Prop. 142 would amend the Arizona Constitution to bar public institutions from compelling endorsement of race-based preferences or DEI/intersectionality tenets, and from spending public money on offices that promote race-based preferential treatment.

Among other things, it would ban the state from requiring enrollment in a course or training that promotes the creation of a race-based diversity, equity, and inclusion or intersectionality. It would also prevent the use of state funds for training or offices that aim to promote preferential treatment toward or discrimination against an individual or group due to their race or ethnicity.

Will of the People describes Prop. 142 as “a confusing change to our state’s constitution that censors what can be said in our schools and other institutions by rolling back First Amendment rights.” 

In June, the conservative Goldwater Institute’s Matt Beienburg praised the legislation that created the proposition. 

“HCR2044 will not single-handedly cure higher education of all its ideological rot, but it will build a permanent foundation for our institutions, anchoring them with an enduring commitment to colorblind excellence and academic integrity,” he wrote. 

Beienburg added that the referral would “enshrine the strongest state protections against DEI and race-based ‘affirmative action’ of any state in the country.”

Proposition 144

Prop. 144 is a constitutional amendment that would implement a series of election reforms. It would require voters to show government-issued proof of identity to cast a ballot in an election, regardless of whether they are voting in person or by mail, but it doesn’t include instructions for how that would be accomplished for mail-in ballots. 

When Texas implemented a voter ID mandate on early ballots in 2022, it led to a 1,300% increase in the number of absentee ballots that were rejected. A similar increase in rejections in Arizona, where voting by mail is widespread, could lead to hundreds of thousands of ballots going uncounted.

And Prop. 144 would add language to the state constitution stating that only citizens could vote and register to vote in an Arizona election, provisions that have been in Arizona law since statehood. It would also prohibit foreign nationals from making contributions to influence an Arizona election — they already cannot give to candidates, and this would extend that to independent political committees and ballot measure campaigns — and require that voters have the option to have their votes tabulated at their voting location on Election Day beginning in 2028. 

“This amendment will change Arizona’s State Constitution to make it harder, and potentially impossible, to vote by mail,” Will of the People says on its website. 

State Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who sponsored the underlying legislation that put Prop. 144 on the ballot, said during a Sept. 30 Clean Elections debate that it would make voting easier, but didn’t point to any specific provision that would do so. Kolodin, the Republican nominee for Arizona secretary of state, denies that it would do away with vote by mail, but he’s supported legislation that would end the most popular way to cast a ballot in the past. 

“Prop 144 undermines the whole purpose of voting by mail by requiring Arizona voters to submit redundant proof of identification before mailing in their ballots, in every single election,” the Will of the People campaign says. “No other state with a strong vote-by-mail program does this.”

The resolution, which Kolodin said was intended to restore trust in the state’s elections and to speed up results, was significantly pared down from his initial proposal, based on Florida elections, that he’s been trying to pass for more than two years.

Proposition 318

Prop. 318 would expand the existing statute banning transgender students from playing on the K-12 or college sports team that aligns with their gender identity to require that teams be designated by biological sex beginning in 2027. Biological sex would be determined based on the athlete’s original birth certificate. 

“This measure may seem reasonable to some, but read the fine print,” Will of the People says. “Prop. 318 takes decisions away from parents, educators, coaches, and athletic organizations and puts them in the hands of politicians who don’t even know our kids’ names. This isn’t about sports. It’s about expanding state government into decisions it doesn’t need to be involved in.”

While opponents say that it will lead to policing of bathroom use for even spectators who use facilities at sporting events, its sponsor in the Arizona House of Representatives, Selina Bliss, said it would protect girls.

“Women’s sports were created because biological differences matter,” Bliss said in a February statement. “When those differences are ignored, girls lose roster spots, scholarships, and opportunities they earned.”

Will of the People called the proposition “a brazen attempt” by Republican legislators to mandate that small children playing sports for fun and college athletes are treated the same. 

“Prop 318 puts the state in the dangerous position of undermining the choices that parents, educators, and coaches make on who can and can’t participate on a sports team,” Will of the People says. “A league of five-year-olds gets treated the same way as a Division I college team.”

Proposition 320

Proposition 320 would require the public schools that teach more than 80% of Arizona students to increase their direct instructional spending by one-half a percentage point annually until they reach at least 60% of their spending. School districts that don’t comply would see their share of the Classroom Site Fund decreased by 25% each year, until it reaches zero. That money goes toward teacher salaries and bonuses, smaller classes and support services for students, and would equal tens of millions of dollars for some school districts. 

The spending mandate would apply only to the 71 school districts in populous Maricopa and Pima counties, plus a handful of larger rural districts with at least 7,500 students.

“This is a measure that will markedly improve teacher pay in this state, and it will finally rebalance a broken system that currently is focused on bloating the administration rather than funding classrooms,” the referral’s sponsor, Sen. Jake Hoffman, said during a Feb. 19 Senate Government Committee hearing.

Prop. 320 doesn’t include a guarantee that the 60% funding would go toward teacher pay, and would leave it up to the state auditor general to determine the definition of “direct instruction.” 

Hoffman, leader of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, is a proponent of the state’s school voucher program, which provides public funding for any K-12 student to attend private school, or to be homeschooled. 

“Arizona has ranked as low as 50th in the nation for education funding,” the Will of the People campaign says. “Prop 320 does nothing to solve the problem, and it only makes it worse. Prop 320 asks voters to approve penalties now and let a political appointee write the rules later.”