Why We're Running

We’re John and Sara Travise, and we’re running for SRP Council in District 6.

Not because we planned political careers. Not because someone recruited us. We’re running because we got tired of watching the same insiders run our utility like a private club while our bills kept climbing.

The System Is Working Exactly As Designed

SRP controls water and power for over 2 million people in the Valley. Unlike most utilities, it has an elected board and council. That sounds democratic until you learn how it actually works.

Voting power is based on how much land you own. More acres, more votes. Renters—about 40% of SRP’s service territory—get nothing. A regular homeowner on a quarter-acre lot gets a fraction of a vote. I get 0.12 votes based on my lot size.

Meanwhile, large landowners can cast hundreds of votes. And they do.

The Energy and Policy Institute just published a report documenting how one family manipulated this system to decide a Board election in 2024—then cashed out to a Wall Street data center company for $246.8 million.

That family? The Vanderweys. Our opponents.

Nick Vanderwey converted approximately 240 acres from an LLC to a trust right before SRP’s ownership cutoff. LLCs can’t vote. Trusts can. He then cast 217.76 votes in the Division 3 Board race. The winner got 263.88 total votes. Vanderwey’s votes were 82% of that—essentially deciding the election single-handedly.

After the election, he flipped the land back to an LLC and sold it to Blackstone for a data center.

Now he wants a seat on the Board that regulates that data center. His brother Michael is running for Council—that’s Sara’s race.

This isn’t corruption in the traditional sense. It’s technically legal under SRP’s rules. That’s the problem.

Who We Are

I’m an Army veteran with over 10 years of service, including combat deployments to Iraq. I work in cybersecurity now—protecting enterprise networks, analyzing threats, holding vendors accountable. My dad was a union coal miner in West Virginia. He worked at Sago, the mine where an explosion killed 12 men in 2006. I learned early what happens when working people don’t have a voice.

Sara is an artist and cybersecurity professional. She believes complex problems deserve clear answers—not jargon designed to confuse people into compliance. She’s the one who keeps asking “why” until she gets a real answer.

We’re District 6 homeowners. We have solar panels and battery storage. We’ve built dashboards to track our energy costs because SRP’s rate structures are deliberately opaque. We’re ratepayers who got tired of being ratepayers with no representation.

What We’re Fighting For

Affordable rates. Every rate increase hits working families first. Someone on the Council should treat your money like it matters—because it does.

Data center accountability. Massive facilities are going up across the Valley, consuming enormous amounts of water and electricity. SRP is building infrastructure to serve them. Who pays? Right now, residential customers. We’ll push for large commercial users to pay their actual share.

Water transparency. We live in a desert. Families are told to conserve while data centers get allocated whatever they need. SRP should publish exactly how much water these facilities consume. Residents deserve to know.

End the insider culture. SRP’s board has been run by the same circles for too long—family legacies, industry connections, decisions made before meetings even start. We have no family legacy on the Council. No PAC money. No data center deals waiting for us. We answer to voters, not donors.

What We’re Up Against

Turning Point Action is pouring resources into SRP elections. Their goal: stop “radical environmentalists” from asking questions about rates. Apparently that’s us now.

Our opponents have establishment backing, family connections, and a system designed to keep turnout low. Turnout in SRP elections is typically 1-2%. That’s not an accident—it’s how insiders stay in power.

We have laptops, a canvassing app we built ourselves, and neighbors who are fed up.

What You Can Do

Check if you can vote. SRP elections are completely separate from regular elections. Even if you vote in every primary and general, you’re not registered for SRP unless you specifically signed up. You must own property in SRP territory and be a registered Arizona voter.

Key dates:

• March 9, 2026 — Registration deadline
• March 11, 2026 — Early ballots mailed
• April 7, 2026 — Election Day

Check your status: srpnet.com/elections or call (602) 236-3048

Spread the word. Most people don’t know SRP has elections. Tell your neighbors. Share this post. The insiders win when nobody shows up.

Download our app. We built Clean Energy Friends to help people check which of their contacts can vote in SRP elections. It takes 30 seconds.

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We’re not asking you to trust us because we have the right connections. We’re asking you to trust us because we don’t.

SRP’s Council has served insiders long enough. This seat belongs to ratepayers, and we’re running to take it back.

— John & Sara

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Have questions? Want to volunteer? Get in touch.