Last Sunday’s Arizona Republic reported on the extent and impact of outside groups’ political spending on Arizona state and legislative races.

Overall, the article concluded that outside spending is up and influences elections. However, the story pointed out one notable exception – our own State Rep. John Kavanagh, who won election to the state Senate.

The news story noted that John was targeted in the Republican primary with $160,000 in outside money, much of it used to fund mailers and signs that lied about his positions.

In addition, his opponent in the primary, Jeff Schwartz, used his campaign money to also lie about John, including putting up road signs that John support Obamacare and Common Core, when John actually was a vocal opponent of both.

Representative Kavanagh still won handily in the primary over Schwartz because the voters of Fountain Hills overwhelmingly knew that John is a great representative and stood by him, with the sorry exception of former Mayor Jay Schlum, who supported Schwartz even after Schwartz put up the lying road signs and sent out the false mailers.