Arizona Senate GOP gives contract to election "questioner"
Senate President Warren Petersen hired an election "questioner" as a contracted policy advisor.
Last week, in my post “Karen Fann's emails conveniently scrubbed” I mentioned that the only records I had received in that specific request was Senate President Warren Petersen sending a blue memo to all senators and staff that he was hiring Gina Swoboda as a senior policy advisor for the Senate Elections Committee.
The committee that Petersen chose an openly antisemitic lawmaker in Wendy Rogers to oversee.
Swoboda is an election “questioner” with ties to the Donald Trump campaign in 2020 and the Kari Lake campaign in 2022 –– both campaigns which lost their elections to Democrats that resulted in endless temper tantrums crying about a stolen election to laughably judicial defeats in practically every courtroom imaginable.
Only, Swoboda was not listed under the Senate’s staff and salaries I had previously requested after her start date of January 3 as I had written about on Jan 20.
I reached out to the always helpful public records coordinator with the Arizona Senate to find out why she wasn’t listed under staff despite her “Senior Policy Advisor” title.
“I followed up with our comptroller and Gina Swoboda is a contract consultant,” Pete Galvan told me.
Her contract is listed for four months at $15,000 per month ending on April 30 unless the Senate ends it sooner, but both sides must agree to the termination, it says. What’s more likely is the legislature will still be in session come May and I would guess Petersen extends it on the taxpayer’s dime, but that’s just speculation.
In total as it stands, Swoboda will be making $60,000 for four months of helping other election deniers attempt to create new laws that would result in chaos for Arizona’s elections.
Of course, realistically speaking now, Gov. Katie Hobbs won’t sign any of those ridiculous proposals like ending voting by mail even though most of the lawmakers themselves only vote this way (Remember Mark Finchem?) or trying to switch to counting every single ballot (millions) by hand, which would mean we would probably be at the next Election Day before the previous cycle’s votes were fully counted to their satisfaction.
The contract isn’t listed on the State Procurement Office website, but that’s likely because the Arizona Legislature is exempt from the procurement process1, which is how they were able to hire Cyber Ninjas the way they did.
Her statement of work explicitly states, “During the contract term, Consultant shall not perform any other work related to Arizona Elections,” but doesn’t specify if it would actually do anything if she were to violate that clause. Everything is incumbent on Petersen, but he hasn’t really proven he would act in the best interest of the state or its people given his role in the “audit” in 2021.
Swoboda is currently the executive director of Voter Reference Foundation, an election-denying group trying to get all 50 states to post voter rolls online among other potential legislative fixes to election law.
That sounds like she’s already involved in “other work related to Arizona Elections.”
What also worries me, as someone who covered the Cyber Ninjas and “audit” at length is the terminology used in Swoboda’s contract, which is likely a reason why she was hired this way in the first place: “The consultant is not considered an employee of the State of Arizona or of the Senate. Consultant is not considered an agent of the State and must provide their own liability insurance and hold the State harmless.”
The latter part is beneficial at least that the Senate is not liable for her if she’s sued for this work, but it’s the rest that I have concerns over. I am operating a newsletter dedicated to public records after all.
“Consultant is not considered an agent of the State” is similar to what the Senate tried (and failed) to argue in court over Cyber Ninjas. And unless there’s another lawsuit2 they might be able to get away with denying any public records requests between Swoboda and others not at the Legislature.
Given this is nowhere near the scale of the hiring of Cyber Ninjas, I’d also bet a lawsuit from the Arizona Republic or even a collective of news outlets in Arizona would be highly unlikely. American Oversight might have interest though given their previous requests looking into communications between the Arizona House and Senate and Swoboda3 (among others) last year.
As for Swoboda’s payment, she’d be at $180,000 for a full year’s salary (if she were to work for 12 months), which would put her behind only Senate Chief of Staff Josh Kredit’s $200,000 salary.
Her monthly payments are also nearly two times as much as the contract Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes gave to his political consultant. That averaged to $8,000/month.
I guess these exclusive contracts are going around. I’ll try to stay on top of them all.
The Legislature really doesn’t want any rules to apply to them, it’s truly wild.
Don’t tempt me with a good time, but seriously, any attorneys want to take on public records battles pro bono?
If Swoboda’s name sounds familiar, it popped up a lot during the 2020 cycle regarding intraparty squabbles within Maricopa County GOP and AZGOP when her role was as Trump’s election day operations director.