Arizona Corporation Commission Commissioner Kevin Thompson is using his personal email account to communicate with the Regulators Roundtable on Commission issues. The Regulators Roundtable is a utility-affiliated organization that offers corporate “investors” private access to state regulators and works to support the election of Republican regulators. EPI filed a public records request with the Corporation Commission (ACC) in July 2025 seeking records pertaining to Thompson’s communications with the Roundtable’s president or records related to the group, including a request specifically to search personal email accounts used by Thompson. The ACC provided EPI with records in September 2025, but records obtained by EPI through separate requests in different states found ten relevant records not provided by the ACC, but within the scope of EPI’s request. EPI also obtained six additional records (outside of the time period of the request to the ACC) from these other state requests showing Thompson using his personal email for Roundtable business.

Records show Thompson communicating with other regulators and the Roundtable’s president, Elizabeth Gianini, on topics that appear to be related to his role at the Commission, including his attendance and presentations at corporate-sponsored, private events with fossil fuel and utility attendees, and detailed proposals that Thompson drafted to weaken EPA regulations on coal- and gas-fired power plants for a Roundtable memo to a White House economist.

The Regulators Roundtable launches a conservative commissioner network with utility support

The Regulators Roundtable was created by GOPAC, a network of GOP-linked outside groups focused on recruiting, training, and financially backing Republican down-ballot candidates, including state legislators, district attorneys, and members of Congress.

Financial disclosures show how utilities, including those based in Arizona, are large and growing donors to GOPAC Inc., a 527 group at the center of GOPAC’s national network. In the beginning of 2026, Pinnacle West (PNW), APS’s parent company, gave $95,000 to GOPAC, and Southwest Gas (SWG) gave $15,000. Both utilities are longtime GOPAC contributors, giving as far back as 2015: between 2020 and 2025, PNW contributed $130,000, SWG contributed $35,000, and Fortis, the parent company of UNS Energy and Tucson Electric Power, contributed $155,000. Since 2020, utility trade associations have also made significant donations, including $170,000 from the Edison Electric Institute and $30,000 from the American Gas Association.

GOPAC launched the Roundtable in early 2025, creating a 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), and a political action committee (PAC). As Gianini would later explain to several ACC commissioners, “[t]he idea for Regulators RoundTable came from Commissioner Kim David, Chair of the OK Corporation Commission. She was very active in GOPAC when she was in the OK state senate [sic], and felt like there is not a place where conservative commissioners could get to know each other, share best practices and hear about current and cutting edge technology from a business perspective.”

A “prospectus” that Gianini prepared for potential “investor” companies described how, in exchange for $50,000, they would enjoy access to “exclusive” events offering an “opportunity for investors to engage directly with” regulators to “help shape policy.” 

The Regulators Roundtable has since joined and hosted several events funded by corporate donors, offering private, all-inclusive retreats attended by commissioners and representatives of companies with financial stakes in their regulatory decisions. Thompson publicly touted his involvement with GOPAC in July 2025, posting on his social media about a panel he spoke on at the group’s Energy Matters workshop in Nashville, “talking about energy dominance.” Agenda items at the event included a keynote address from Consumer Energy Alliance, a fossil fuel front group financially backed by Arizona’s largest electric utility, Arizona Public Service (APS), and a presentation from former Trump senior economic advisor Stephen Moore echoing anti-renewable energy talking points. Also in attendance were Roundtable “investors” NRG Energy and the American Gas Association (AGA), the major trade group representing gas utilities, who joined Thompson and other commissioners on the first night of the event for a private dinner at Harper’s, a pricey Nashville steakhouse.   

Three days after the event, emails obtained by EPI from state utility commissions in Mississippi and Nebraska show Thompson responding to Gianini with significant additions to a memo drafted by Roundtable staff for Moore on “what it would take from the PSC perspective to move faster to build the power the US needs to lead.” Thompson’s requests, which appear to have been incorporated into a later version of the memo obtained by EPI, included drastic rollbacks to existing EPA regulations, which Thompson told Gianini “are adding costs onto our ability to use natural gas and coal fired generation.”

Records indicate Gianini arranged travel and lodging for the commissioners to attend the Nashville event and that Thompson’s involvement with GOPAC and the Roundtable began before the conference. In May 2025, Thompson sent Wyoming Public Service Commissioner Mike Robinson an email with the subject line “Regulators Roundtable,” which he explained was a “subgroup of GoPAC” on behalf of which he was helping “recruit fellow republicans [sic].”

Other ACC Commissioners join the Regulators Roundtable

In March 2025, Gianini formally invited Commissioners Rachel Walden and Nick Myers to join the Regulators Roundtable’s advisory board and to attend a Roundtable meeting the following October. In the invites, Gianini mentioned Thompson trying to introduce her to the other ACC commissioners in Washington, DC, likely referring to the February 2025 National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Winter Policy Summit. In June 2025, Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson published an article titled “Arizona: Leading the charge in America’s Energy Dominance,” on Energy Platform News, a GOPAC-affiliated news outlet that claimed to be “an independent U.S. media organization” and that did not make visible its affiliation with GOPAC. The outlet went offline in August 2026. Myers and Thompson also authored articles in the media outlet earlier this year, with Myers criticizing California’s role in the Western electricity market and Thompson praising the federal rollback of EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxins Standards rule. 

In April 2025, Márquez Peterson and Thompson joined eight other state regulators in signing formal comments in a federal regulatory docket that defended the “vertically-integrated utility model” and urged the Trump Administration not to investigate monopoly utilities as “anticompetitive.” Emails obtained by EPI suggest the comments were originally authored by Gianini and a former Georgia commissioner. All three versions of the comments posted to the online docket list “Elizabeth Gianini” in the “Submitter Name” field, while the two versions that embed the comments in PDF files list “Elizabeth Gianini” in the “Author” field of their embedded metadata. 

The comments were presented as the work of the ten regulators; the Roundtable’s involvement was not disclosed.

Commissioner Rene Lopez was scheduled to meet with Gianini in person in June 2025 to discuss the Regulators Roundtable’s planned “Inaugural Roundtable Event,” according to emails between Lopez and Gianini that EPI obtained from other state commissions. The meeting, which was hosted in Scottsdale, Arizona in October 2025, featured a tour of APS’s Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. All five ACC commissioners attended the event; at least Lopez appeared to accept reimbursement of the hotel from the Regulators’ Roundtable. The ACC issued a notice of joint appearance for the commissioners’ attendance of the event. The notice said the commissioners would not “vote on any issue or discuss, propose, or take legal action related to their official duties with the Arizona Corporation Commission,” but the event agenda specifically detailed that participants would examine “removing regulatory barriers that hinder investment and innovation.” In many of her communications, Gianini sent messages  using the personal emails of Lopez, Myers, and Márquez Peterson.

Two Arkansas PSC commissioners who attended the Scottsdale Roundtable disclosed receiving $2,810.90 and $2,662.91 in hospitality from the Roundtable’s 501(c)(3) arm, the Regulators Roundtable Institute, including, in one case, $1,034.35 in meals. 

Arizona requires public officials to disclose travel expenses exceeding $1000 per event that are paid on their behalf by outside parties. None of the ACC commissioners disclosed receiving travel or gifts from GOPAC or the Regulators Roundtable in 2025. 

In November 2025, Thompson appeared on a list of attendees for a virtual meeting hosted by the Roundtable for member commissioners with Peter Lake, Senior Director of Power for the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council, to discuss a major open policy issue: DOE’s directive to FERC to create national rules governing the interconnection of large loads, like data centers, to the grid.

Thompson, Myers, and Márquez Peterson were also included on a list of regulators who attended a Roundtable event in Washington, DC, in January 2026, which focused on enhancing “federal-state coordination,” among other topics. In addition to regulators and private sector sponsors, attendees and presenters included top Trump Administration officials, including Lake, Deputy Secretary of Energy James Danly, and Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner David Wright. Other agenda items included a roundtable led by the CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute (a Roundtable donor), a presentation titled “The Left’s Latest Enviro Scheme” by the CEO of the Capital Research Center, and a session on the “implications…at the state level” of rollbacks to federal “environmental rules” by longtime coal advocate and Roundtable board member Mike Nasi.

While attending this Washington Roundtable, a North Carolina regulator received complimentary meals worth $1,034.85, flights worth $502.83, and lodging worth $738.54, according to information provided to the regulator’s staff by a Roundtable consultant.

Unknowns remain regarding public records search at ACC

EPI filed an initial public records request to the ACC on July 21, 2025, with a timeline requesting records from February 1, 2025 “to the date of processing the request.” On July 22, 2025, ACC Senior Associate General Counsel Maureen Scott acknowledged receipt of the request, stating “it has been entered into the Commission’s log and processing of it should begin this week.”

On September 24, 2025, the ACC provided responsive records to the request. Responsive records obtained from separate FOIA requests by EPI found records within the scope and parameters of EPI’s request to the ACC – including the requested timeline, specific keywords and domains, and the specific personal Gmail account used by Commissioner Thompson to communicate with Gianini and members of GOPAC and the Regulators Roundtable – which the ACC did not provide to EPI in its responsive records. 

The ACC confirmed that the commissioners conduct their own search of records for requests, including searching personal email accounts. Arizona public records law does not exclude personal emails from public records requests. 

EPI has attempted to receive clarification on  how the search for Thompson’s records was conducted to explain the missing records, but at the time of publication, EPI had not received a response from the Office of General Counsel. 

The Regulators Roundtable endorses both Thompson and Myers for reelection

Myers and Thompson faced Dr. Ralph Heap in a competitive Republican primary on July 21. The Regulators Roundtable PAC endorsed both Thompson and Myers, and, in the weeks leading up to the election, Gianini shared at least seventeen posts on social media promoting the incumbent regulators’ campaigns.

On July 7, less than three weeks before Primary Day, the Regulators Roundtable PAC posted a video ad attacking Heap on its website under the headline “Don’t take a chance with Ralph Heap.” (The final frames of the video ad disclose it was paid for by the “Conservative Grassroots Network Election Fund.”) 

With the support of conservative groups such as Turning Point Action and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Heap defeated Myers in the primary. Thompson finished first, winning 35.8% of the vote; Heap came in second with 33.0%; while Myers, relegated to third place with 31.2%, failed to advance to the general election. After the primary, the Regulators Roundtable PAC appears to have removed its endorsement of Myers from its website.

The week before Myers’ primary defeat, Thompson wrote a post on X that included a photo of himself and Myers in Florida, attending another GOPAC meeting.