| NEWS | Ministry of Misinformation No, Mark Zuckerberg did not gift millions to sway Arizona’s elections. BY KATYA SCHWENK F ormer Arizona lawmaker and current state senate candidate Anthony Kern wants you to think Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave millions to Katie Hobbs during the 2020 election. Except, Zuckerberg did not. “Maricopa County Supervisors and Katie Hobbs took $3 million each from Zuckerberg during the 2020 election,” Kern tweeted last week. “Why?” The misleading tweet had racked up nearly 6,000 likes and hundreds of out- raged comments by that afternoon. But Kern — a staunch believer in November 2020 presidential election con- spiracies who used campaign funds to travel to the January 6 riots — did not offer any more information. Kern did not return a phone call or email from Phoenix New Times seeking comment. But it’s clear that Kern’s insinuations of misconduct about the November 2020 election are unfounded. Murphy Hebert, communications di- rector for the Arizona Secretary of State, was resounding in denying the claim. “Unoquivocally, no,” she said. “We did not receive $3 million dollars from Mark Zuckerberg,” Hebert said. Hobbs was elected as secretary of state for Arizona in 2019. During her fundrais- ing campaign, she raised $1.1 million in donations, the largest of which came from Planned Parenthood and several trade unions. So far in her ongoing campaign for governor, she has raised nearly $3 million, largely from individual contributions. Zuckerberg is not a donor to Hobbs. Hebert declined to speculate on Kern’s claims. Kern repeated his false claims during Donald Trump’s “Save America” Rally in Florence, Arizona a few weeks ago. “We’re going to keep Arizona red,” Kern said during the rally. “It’s going to be a red wave that will blow the mind of every American out there. I want to thank Donald Trump, who I believe is our presi- dent because the election was stolen.” It’s possible that Kern’s recent tweet refers to the $4.8 million grant that the Center for Election Innovation and Research gave to the state of Arizona to help run an educational campaign in advance of the 2020 election. CEIR is a Washington D.C.-based non- 6 profit that works to improve voter turnout and election policy. The organization, which was founded in 2016, accepted a $50 million donation from Zuckerberg and Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons Former Arizona State Representative Anthony Kern is running for office yet again in Arizona. used the money to offer grants to states to help fund election outreach. Arizona and 23 other states received funding. In Arizona, Hebert said, the money was used “to put together an information campaign... to communicate directly with voters about some of the changing land- scape around the elections.” She credited the “historic participa- tion” in the 2020 election in part to those resources. “These grants were offered to every sin- gle state, both red states, blue states, every- thing in between,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of CEIR. States chose what to spend the money on, Becker said. Some created mailers, oth- ers did radio advertising, informing voters how and where they could vote. “It’s never ‘plan A’ to have philan- thropy fund a service that government should be paying for,” he added, but noted that faced with the challenges posed by the pandemic, federal and state govern- ment “failed to step up.” Zuckerberg also gave a series of gener- ous donations in the fall of 2020 to the Center for Tech and Civic Life. The orga- nization used the fund to create a “CO- VID-19 response” grant program which, it said, “offered funding to local election ad- ministrators to enable them to provide safe and secure voting procedures during the pandemic.” The Center for Tech and Civic Life was named in a lawsuit filed in December 2020 by Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward, which alleged a litany of claims about elec- tion fraud that the county ultimately debunked. The judge dimissed the case. But, in court filings, CTCL defended itself against claims that it was “a disguise for an in- sidious partisan scheme,” saying that the funds were used for “purchase personal protective equipment for voters and elec- tion workers, to recruit and train additional staff, to provide im- proved security, to establish in- person polling places,” and other normal election procedures. The founder of Facebook might not have personally cut checks to Hobbs and Maricopa County. But now, private funding is banned in Arizona anyway. In April 2021, Governor Doug Ducey signed a bill that would bar the use of private funds to fund elec- tions. It would apply only to “preparing for, administering or conducting an election,” including the voter registration process — and would not apply to, say, ballot reviews. Although the bill was a response to the mounting outrage over claims of “election fraud” in 2020, its authors said, the use of private money for elections has raised eye- brows on both sides of the aisle in Arizona. “We all came to an agreement that it is the duty of taxpayers to fund the election,” Arizona Representative Kelli Butler told NPR last March. “But the fact is, we aren’t doing that right now.” Butler is a Democrat who represents Arizona Legislative District 28, which includes Scottsdale. The harsh reality about the lack of fund- ing is why organizations like the Center for Election Innovation and Research exist and donate widely, its founder said. “That’s not a problem for me, so long as [the] government is willing to step up and say, we are going to guarantee adequate funding [for elections],” Becker said. “That would be [a] wonderful outcome.” Instead, states are “strangling the bud- gets of election offices while preventing them from seeking help from other sources,” he said. In Arizona, the secretary of state’s office requested an additional $5 million this year to help with voter outreach, in lieu of private funding. Although the budget is not yet formalized, “it’s not looking good,” Hebert said. “It means that we won’t be able to do the same level of outreach,” she said. But still, even without charity, the office still plans to “do everything that we can to make sure people can participate fully in their election.” External Affairs ASU Survey: Arizona police shouldn’t investigate their own shootings. BY ELIAS WEISS shoot civilians while on the job. State lawmakers requested that Arizona A State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy survey at least 1,000 people across the state of various races and ethnicities for a sense of the public’s trust in local law enforcement. Now lawmakers are considering legisla- tion that could change the standard process by which local police investigate their own officers for aallegations of misconduct. The survey was funded by Phoenix-based nonprofit Arizona Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization that invests donor money in various ways, from community development projects to arts and culture programs. Alison Cook-Davis is a research director of the Morrison Institute who spearheaded the survey about trust in law enforcement. “This particular topic has been in the hearts and minds of Arizonans,” Cook-Davis told Phoenix New Times. ASU released the results last week. Respondents considered four options: a task force, a state agency, an outside police department, or the shooting officer’s own department. The latter was markedly the least desirable course of action among survey respondents. The majority of Arizona residents who responded to the survey, 51 percent, sup- ported the creation of a statewide indepen- dent agency to investigate when police shoot civilians. Among survey respondents who are Hispanic or Latino, 54 percent supported the new agency while 60 percent of Black respondents agreed that outside scrutiny is needed. “As a public policy institute, we are very excited that the data is actionable,” Cook- Davis said. “It means that [legislators] are taking into account the opinions of Arizonans.” People of color are more likely to be wounded and killed by police bullets in Arizona. Sometimes individuals are suspects of a crime and wield weapons, but in some situations are completely unarmed when interacting with police. Emilio Chamizo, a 30-year-old Arizona resident was shot and killed by police near 27th Avenue and McDowell Road >> p 9 rizona State University researchers measured public sentiment about what should happen after police FEB 17TH– FEB 23RD, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
