State Democrats Claim Spike In Donations After SB 1062 Votes

By Andrew Romanov
Published: Monday, February 24, 2014 - 3:46pm
Updated: Monday, February 24, 2014 - 4:15pm
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The Arizona Democratic Party has seen an uptick in political contributions since SB 1062 passed the state legislature last week, according to a party representative. SB 1062 is the measure passed by the state legislature last week that would allow business owners with strongly held religious beliefs to deny service based on sexual orientation.

State Democrats said they have raised thousands of dollars as a result of the controversy surrounding SB 1062. DJ Quinlan of the state Democratic Party said they have tracked donations and have seen a significant spike in political contributions in the last five days.

“We’ll send out an email on a specific subject, and we can actually see what comes in off that fundraising email,” said Quinlan. “So when you compare this to other issues, the emails we’ve sent out on SB 1062 have brought in more contributions than the average email that we send out.”

State Republican Party spokesman Tim Sifert said there is no way to tell if donations are related to any specific issue and that contributions to state democrats will not make much of a difference.

“If they get a couple thousand dollars, that’s a big deal for them,” said Sifert. “For us, that’s just what we normally get in the course of a week or a few days of business.”

Sifert said the state GOP has not seen a notable bump in donations over the weekend.

Official state campaign finance reports will be released in June.

Updated 2/24/2004 at 4:15 p.m.