Large Donors and Special Interests Own Juan Ciscomani

Electoral campaigns announced their financial reports for the first quarter of 2026 in early April. In our district, JoAnna Mendoza’s campaign raised $2,440,651. Juan Ciscomani’s campaign raised $1,138,649. It seemed to us that our representative might be worried about his electoral prospects. We were not surprised by what we heard next.

On April 13th, Tucson Sentinel published an article about JoAnna Mendoza’s plans to unseat Juan Ciscomani from his CD-06 seat. The article quoted Cicomani’s strategist Daniel Scarpinato:

“Mendoza is being bankrolled by out-of-state donors and special interests who support her track record of pushing for higher taxes on Arizonans at a time they can least afford it.”

We thought that Scarpinato’s statement might bend the truth a bit, and we wanted to learn more about funding sources for both candidates. While the top line – the total raised – is usually quoted as a reflection of a campaign’s strength, this line doesn’t tell us how much local support the candidate has. Many small donors may mean more support than one large donor. In the case of Ciscomani, we need to pay attention to the influence of large donations from certain PACs and corporations, as discussed in our recent post. In particular, it was important to follow the trail of HSL Properties that seems to be donating to Ciscomani behind the scenes. Here are the results of our crunching thousands of records from the Federal Election Commission receipts for both campaigns for the current campaign cycle (1/1/2025 to 3/31/2026).

Campaign	Juan Ciscomani	JoAnna Mendoza
Total funds raised	$5,073,382	$5,340,217
Funds donated by individual donors	$1,725,621	$2,869,540
Number of individual donors	1251	2609
The average amount donated by an individual donor	$1,379	$1,100
Funds donated by individual donors based in Arizona	$610,044	$427,122
Number of individual donors based in Arizona	380	595
The average amount donated by an individual donor based in Arizona	$1,605	$718
Number of PACs and committees supporting the candidate	145	121
Amount raised by PACs and committees	$3,347,761	$771,708
Number of corporate PACs supporting the candidate	63	9
Amount raised by corporate PACs	$208,227	$38,000
The largest donor	American Israel Public Affairs Committee	House Victory Project 2026
The amount donated by the largest donor	$461,450	$664,650

The table above disproves Scarpinato’s claim that Jo Mendoza’s campaign is funded primarily by outside donors and special interests. Her largest donor is a Democratic political organization whose aim is to elect Democrats. The largest donor to Ciscomani’s campaign is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization that advertises as “The Largest Pro-Israel PAC in America”.  Mendoza’s campaign has twice as many small donors, including individual donors in Arizona.

Representative Ciscomani draws a much larger haul from PACs funded by corporations. He is supported by 63 such PACs, including:

• Airbus – $3,000
• Boeing – $5,000
• Altria Group – $5,000
• American Council of Engineering Companies – $7,500
• National Multifamily Housing Council – $5,000
• American Hospital Association – $5,000
• BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona – $5,000
• CVS – $2,500
• Exact Sciences – $2,500
• Genentech – $1,000
• Johnson & Johnson – $1,000
• Texas Instruments – $1,000
• Lockheed Martin – $1,000
• Northrop Grumman – $5,000
• BAE Systems – $5,000
• Delta Airlines – $4,000

In contrast, Mendoza’s corporate PACs list includes workers’ unions and professional associations, including:

• International Association of Sheet Metal Air, Rail and Transportation Workers – $5,000
• American Society of Anesthesiologists – $5,000
• Association of Professional Flight Attendants – $2,000
• Communications Workers of America – $1,000
• Engineers Political Education Committee/International Union of Operating Engineers – $5,000

While HSL Properties was not on the list of contributors for the 2025-2026 cycle, we found records of $25,000 given last November to Americans for Prosperity Action PAC. This money will likely go to Ciscomani through several other PACs, helping to hide HSL Properties’ contributions.

A recent news segment on KOLD might have given some credence to Scarpinato’s assertion. The station demonstrated that Juan Ciscomani’s haul of money is mostly based in Arizona, while Jo Mendoza’s money comes primarily from California, with Arizona second. But there is a PAC that might account for much of the claim that most of Ciscomani’s support is local.

Enter Ciscomani Victory Fund, registered in September 2022. It is based in Tucson and donated $45,000 to the Ciscomani campaign in this fundraising cycle. Since January 2025, the fund has received donations from 262 individuals and 4 PACs and raised $1,075,130. Almost all donors are in Arizona.

This fund is not a typical election fund, where one can donate $5 or $10. Individual donations to this fund ranged from $250 to $25,000; the average donor contributed $4,002. The FEC receipts include seven individuals, each of whom donated $25,000. In other words, three wealthy Tucson couples and one individual donated $175,000 to buy Ciscomani’s votes. That’s more than 297 of the smallest Arizona donors to the Ciscomani campaign, and 506 of the smallest Arizona donors to the Mendoza campaign.

Yes, it’s local money. But this money is from a very small pool of wealthy people and does not translate into broad support for Juan Ciscomani.

The fund’s purpose seems to be to hide donations from wealthy individuals and to transfer money to the campaign. Some of them might not want their names out there, so we haven’t disclosed them.

But we will make an exception for one notable donor from Dallas, Texas, who gave $14,000. The donor is none other than Harlan Crow – the same Harlan Crow who has funded lavish vacations for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Joanna Mendoza’s campaign donations clearly show her focus on CD-06 constituents. She has attracted more individual small donors to her campaign than the sitting congressman. Unsurprisingly, she does not receive any funds from AIPAC – her campaign accepted funding from J Street, which opposes the war in Iran and Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Southern Lebanon, in contrast to the AIPAC stand. PAC support of her campaign is driven by center-left policy-supporting organizations, rather than the specific interests of wealthy individuals and businesses.

Ciscomani is supported primarily by large corporations, some of which are connected to healthcare delivery, which helps explain why he prefers meetings with lobbyists to town halls with his constituents and does not vote to protect our access to healthcare or social assistance. In contrast, Mendoza is supported by workers’ unions, the very people who need the healthcare Ciscomani votes against. Ciscomani’s individual support is concentrated among a very small group of wealthy Tucsonans, whose interests likely differ from the interests of the poorer 99% of Southern Arizona. Mendoza does not have any specialized PACs that allow wealthy individuals to hide their donations.

After discovering that Harlan Crow donated to Ciscomani’s campaign, we are very curious who is funding Ciscomani’s vacations. Stay tuned.  And TMZ is likely on the lookout for his travels as well after noticing his boondoggle to Scotland during the government shutdown.