Arizona’s three most powerful government officials have in recent years turned to a nonprofit elections group for free work, giving access and influence to an outside organization that has targeted former aides to Donald Trump and tracks people who deny election results.
States United Democracy Center’s ties to the top tiers of Arizona government include writing an extensive memorandum for Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes in 2023. That legal digest describes a “false electors scheme” in 2020 and is now under fire from conservatives.
Lawyers for people being prosecuted by Mayes over their involvement say the memo outlining evidence and potential criminal charges against their clients shows the prosecutor’s political bent.
According to Mayes and the leader of States United, the document merely compiled a massive amount of publicly available information and served as a prelude to the attorney general’s investigation. The investigation led to the April indictment of 18 people on felony charges alleging a conspiracy to subvert Democrat Joe Biden’s victory by sending a slate of false electors to Congress.
Read the memo:https://legacy.www.documentcloud.org/documents/25475672-states-united-memo
Attorney Dennis Wilenchik, who represents Jim Lamon, the former U.S. Senate candidate who is being prosecuted, said States United is nothing more than “an anti-Trump political activist organization.”
“The State’s collaboration with and reliance on States United, in any capacity, is further proof of the Attorney General’s improper motivation in bringing this prosecution,” Wilenchik said. “Just look up who is behind it — people like Norm Eisen, who counseled then Chair Jerry Nadler in the impeachment proceeding against Donald Trump. Need I say more?”
Mayes and other elected officers in Arizona have turned to States United amid an environment of intense distrust, lies and conspiracies around elections. Arizona’s three Democratic statewide officeholders have used States United for training, support or legal representation.
States United does the work for free, in a rare arrangement for an outside group offering services to Arizona government officials.
States United President and Chief Executive Officer Joanna Lydgate disputed any partisan motivation in that work, noting the organization assists leaders of both major political parties and is led by a bipartisan advisory board.
“Is there one party that is sort of disproportionately participating in this kind of anti-democracy rhetoric and conduct? Yes,” she said. “But is it purely partisan, is it political? No. And should free and fair elections be a political issue? Absolutely not.”
The nonprofit has made Arizona a priority.
“We do focus on the states where the need is the greatest, and we assess that based on the places where elections are most closely contested, the places where there’s the most litigation and the states are most under-resourced to meet that need,” Lydgate said. “We also think a lot about, again, this atmosphere of political violence and where are the places where we think there might be the greatest level of threat.
“And Arizona kind of checks all of those boxes.”
What is States United?
States United Democracy Center started months before the 2020 election.
Trump, who was at that time the president and seeking a consecutive term, was casting doubt on the reliability of the vote. After his loss to Biden in 2020, Trump’s allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits across the nation. Trump was impeached, and acquitted, after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Lydgate, a former Massachusetts deputy attorney general, saw a gap between under-resourced state officials and a “pretty unprecedented set of challenges: litigation, disinformation, threats and the like.” States United hopes to back up those officials.
Lydgate joined forces with former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Eisen, the former Obama administration official Wilenchik cited when highlighting what he perceived as partisanship.
Eisen was special counsel and special assistant for ethics and government reform to former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. He is a Trump critic who worked for the House committee that helped investigate what became Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Whitman was the Republican governor of New Jersey in the 1990s, but helped create a new political party several years ago.
States United evolved from the Voter Protection Program, an initiative of the Progressive State Leaders Committee, which supports progressive attorney general policies across the nation.
The nonprofit’s goals are to protect free and fair elections, keep officials and the public safe in election season, combat misinformation and hold accountable people who step “outside the bounds of our democracy.”
It is governed by a bipartisan advisory board that includes former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. The late Grant Woods, a Republican Arizona attorney general who broke with his party to support Democrats and called Trump “the least qualified ever,” was a founding member of the board.
An affiliate called States United Action can do advocacy work under federal tax code. The affiliate labels and tracks so-called “election deniers” across the nation and monitors proposed laws that could interfere with elections.
States United has also filed ethics complaints against former Trump aides, including John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, who were charged in Mayes’ case.
“If we don’t have consequences for people who step outside the bounds, who abuse their law licenses, who violate the law and who violate the norms of American democracy, then I think we don’t have any hope for preserving it,” Lydgate said.
States United’s reach with Arizona’s top politicos
The group’s influence reaches high within Arizona government.
When she was secretary of state in 2021, Democrat Katie Hobbs brought in States United for legal counsel. It was “the only option,” Hobbs’ spokesperson said.
Hobbs and the Republican attorney general at the time, Mark Brnovich, were sparring over which of their offices could defend state election laws in court. Arizona Senate Republicans’ review of ballots cast in 2020 — a widely discredited exercise that confirmed Biden’s victory — was ongoing. Hobbs and other election officials were receiving threats, which prompted an exodus of election workers.
In what many Democrats viewed as retaliation, the Republican-majority Arizona Legislature barred Hobbs from spending taxpayer dollars to hire lawyers to represent her.
So States United represented Hobbs for free, as is its typical arrangement when working for government officials.
The group defended Hobbs in a challenge over the state’s 2019 elections procedures manual. When Hobbs was named in cases seeking to overturn election results in 2022 because of her role as the state’s election chief, States United defended the results. That included a case that affirmed Mayes’ 2022 victory.
Then-Secretary Hobbs’ elections director and counsel, Bo Dul, left to work for States United for about a year. After Arizonans elected Hobbs governor, Dul returned to be Hobbs’ top attorney.