Jonathon Hill keeps coming back to a couple he met on the campaign trail. To keep their power bill down, they made a rule: one light on at a time. That means at night, one light has to go off before another goes on. And if they’re in different spaces, only one person gets to enjoy a lit room.
“People are bending over backwards doing everything they possibly can to save money and to lower their bills,” Hill said. “And then the commission is going to come along in December and raise them.”
He’s referring to the Arizona Corporation Commission, a five-member elected body with commissioners that most voters likely cannot name. They set the price of things like water and electricity.
Hill and Clara Pratte, both Democrats, are running for two of its seats on Nov. 3 against Republican incumbent Kevin Thompson and state Rep. Ralph Heap, who beat sitting Commissioner Nick Myers in the primary.
Pratte said part of why the race flies under the radar is because of the commission’s name.
“The name doesn’t lend itself to being very obvious of what it is,” she said. “You might think, well I don’t own a corporation or I’m not involved in business, this might not be an important office for me.”
In Arizona, it’s the office that decides how much of your paycheck goes toward surviving the summers.
The bill and the thermometer
Arizona Public Service (APS), the state’s largest utility, is currently asking the commission for a rate increase of about 14%. The utility is also asking regulators to let it earn a higher guaranteed profit for its shareholders.
If approved, it’ll land on customers who have already been paying more. In 2024, the commission approved a request from APS to increase rates by about $10.50 a month. Separately, APS has also been collecting a fuel charge that regulators extended rather than let expire. Add that all up and the average APS bill rose by nearly 20% from 2020-2024.
Both Democrats said the new request should fail.
“It’s just really, really tough for people to handle that,” Pratte said.
“The current APS rate increase, as far as I’m concerned, should have been dead on arrival,” Hill said.
The rising rate compounds a problem caused by a warming planet. Back in 2024, an 82-year-old woman died after her power was shut off in mid-May, when temperatures hit 99 degrees. Though APS did not acknowledge any wrongdoing, they settled a lawsuit over the death with the state for $7 million.
In mid-March of 2026—just two years later—Phoenix hit triple digits, the earliest on record. Summer is coming earlier and leaving later.
READ MORE: As Arizona hits record heat, the Corporation Commission sides with APS over ratepayers
“During the summer, air conditioning is not a luxury in Arizona,” Hill said. “It’s integral to life. When people’s electricity goes out, people die.”
After the settlement, APS enacted a rule ending electricity shutoffs on days that reach 95 degrees or higher. Pratte said the rule stops the shutoff, but it doesn’t stop the debt.
“It does not stop the bill. Households fall further behind every month of the summer, then spend it dreading October,” she said.
“One month, they pay what they can. Maybe it’s a couple hundred bucks. The next month, they’ve got another $600 bill on top of the thousand they’re already behind. So come October, they’ve got a $3,000 bill.”
Pratte said she’s met hundreds of people in that position.
“It’s heartbreaking. I’ve sat and cried with people, because they’re scared.”
Pratte argued that residential bills are only half of the cost-of-living picture. She said she talked to a person who runs a horse-boarding operation who had to retrofit his stables with LED lighting out of his own pocket.
Those lights used to qualify for utility efficiency rebates, before the Commission repealed the state’s energy efficiency standards in July and rolled back renewable energy requirements.
“When you’re a small business, you have to pass those costs on to your customers,” Pratte said. “If you have a coffee shop or a restaurant and your rates go up, you’re going to have to raise your prices on other things.”
What two votes get you
The Commission will likely decide the APS rate case in December. That’s after the election, but before any new commissioner is sworn in.
Both Democrats suggested the timing was interesting.
“That was conveniently pushed back until after the election,” Pratte said.
Hill went even further.
“Honestly, kind of part of their plan is to push off responsibility potentially on someone else,” he said.
When asked, if elected, what they could do about a rate decision that is made before they arrive, Hill described a long game. Two Democrats on a five-member commission would still be outnumbered, but it’s different than a 5-0 Republican majority.
His plan is disclosure, like opening dockets to force data collection on what data centers draw in water and power, and using a commissioner’s investigative authority to show where ratepayer money goes.
“We might not be able to initially change a vote, but we can subpoena all sorts of documents and show Arizonans where that money is actually going,” he said. His goal, said plainly, is to set a strong foundation on the Commission and win a majority in 2028.
Pratte agreed that there are steps that can be made while in the minority, but pushed even further and suggested that a win for her and Hill in November could potentially scare another Republican on the Commission into moderating votes to hold their seat in the next election.
“If you guys want to maintain control here, you’re going to have to work with us,” Pratte said.
The conflicts
Each side has one.
Incumbent Kevin Thompson, a Republican, runs a consulting firm, and acknowledged at an industry conference in June that he has a data center as a client.
Pratte co-founded and leads Navajo Power, which develops solar projects on tribal land. She said she would recuse herself from the company if elected, but argued there’s no technical conflict because the Commission does not regulate utilities on tribal land.
“Even so, I want to give the public absolute confidence that I’m working on their behalf and not on my behalf,” she said.
She also said her industry background is the point.
“I’ve negotiated power purchase agreements. I’ve worked on transmission fees. I’ve built solar,” Pratte said. “It’s very different than managing and figuring out how to hold utilities accountable versus working for a utility.”
Down the ballot
In June, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated a monthly charge that the Commission had imposed on APS customers who use rooftop solar.
It was just a few dollars a month, but the court found that APS never actually requested the solar-specific fee in its application, and nothing in the public notice informed customers about the change.
The commission now needs to rehear the charge or drop it. In the pending rate case, APS proposed raising the fee to $6.
“The further you get down the ballot, the closer to home it gets,” Pratte said. By the time voters reach the sixth or seventh race, she said, tens of thousands have stopped marking the ballot.
For example, roughly 3,353,000 voted for president in 2024 in Arizona. In judicial retention elections, that number tanked to about 2,637,000. Just north of 700,000 Arizonans stopped marking their ballots somewhere between the vote for president and a vote for the Arizona Supreme Court.
“That could make or break the difference between some of these Commission choices, and then we have to live with those choices for the next four years,” Pratte said.
Hill, who missed a seat on the Commission in 2024 by about 140,000 votes, made the same argument.
“These are the bills that hit you in the pocket every single month. If you’re having trouble making ends meet, this is the office that you need to pay attention to.”
