PHOENIX — There is a saying in politics that "the candidate is the head, the rest of the campaign is the body, and money is the blood."
Candidates running for statewide office in Arizona that made it through the primary collectively raised around $12 million and more than a third of that amount comes from out-of-state donors.
This data is from the Arizona Secretary of State and does not include U.S. Senate candidates who file with the Federal Elections Commission.
Campaign finance laws in Arizona do not distinguish between in-state and out-of-state donors.
Individuals in any state can contribute up to $5,300 in a cycle for both the primary and general elections.
Of the statewide candidates that made it through the primary, Democrat Katie Hobbs has raised $4.2 million from individual contributors.
About $1.8 million of that amount comes from out-of-state donors.
Her opponent Kari Lake trails Hobbs slightly with $3.8 million raised by individual contributions.
Lake has raised $1 million from out-of-state contributors.
For all but one candidate for statewide office, the amount raised from Arizonans exceeds that of out-of-state contributors.
Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem is the lone exception.
His individual contributions, which equals 59%, come from out-of-state donors. The average share of out-of-state donors for all the candidates is 35%.
The total amount raised from out-of-state donors by the ten statewide candidates is just more than $7.6 million. One-in-five dollars was raised from individuals in California. No other state exceeds 1-in-10.
Drilling down to the zip codes reveals that the area with the highest concentration of individual out-of-state donors is Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC.
People in the zip code 20815 donated $57,000.
Next on the list was Jupiter, Florida, a zip code located a few miles north of former President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago at $46,000.
The remaining three zip codes were in New York and Silicon Valley.
