Pro-McSally ‘pop-up PAC’ spent $56K, including on an airplane banner, right before the election

We now know who paid for the aerial advertising in the days before the November election urging voters to support Martha McSally: a so-called “pop-up PAC” tied to a former Arizona Republican Party chairman.

Restore Our Healthcare, Inc., was one of several super PACs that didn’t have to disclose their contributors until after the November election and have now filed their first campaign finance reports. It reported today that it spent $56,000 aiding McSally’s unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign.

Organizations that waited until at least Oct. 18 to to begin spending money didn’t have to file any financial disclosure until several weeks after the election.

According to Restore Our Healthcare’s campaign finance report, it raised about $60,000. The largest chunk of that money, $20,000, came from another organization, Alliance for a Better American Tomorrow. That group has no filings with the FEC, and its only other signs of activity besides Restore Our Healthcare’s report are a bare-bones Facebook page and website, which was created in May.

Restore Our Healthcare’s report lists a Scottsdale address for Alliance for a Better American Tomorrow.

Restore Our Healthcare’s treasurer is former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen. Pullen is the treasurer for another group, Principles First, Inc., that spent nearly $90,000 aiding a losing candidate in the GOP primary for Montana’s U.S. Senate race. Principles First received $40,000 from a group called Alliance for a Better Tomorrow, which lists its address as a residence in Phoenix.

Pullen told the Arizona Mirror that Restore Our Healthcare didn’t time its spending in order to delay the disclosure of its contributors. Rather, he said the timing was based on a need to defend McSally from attacks on her health care policies.

Restore Our Healthcare also received $10,000 apiece from Randy Kendrick, a prominent conservative activist and donor, and a Scottsdale solar engineering company called DEPCOM Power, and $11,500 from Fountain Hills resident Wanda Langner.

The group also received $4,000 from Congressman Paul Gosar’s PAC and $1,000 from Congressman David Schweikert’s PAC.

The $56,000 that Restore Our Healthcare spent in the final weeks of the U.S. Senate race between McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema went toward digital ads, radio ads and the aerial advertising.

The money was a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $60 million that the McSally and Sinema campaigns and their allied super PACs combined to spend in the race.