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How an Arizona newsroom uncovered a mystery candidate

Written by
Edited by Samantha Sunne

During the 2024 election season, John Washington and Becky Pallack, reporters at the Arizona Luminaria, found themselves confronted with a mystery candidate. Athena Eastwood, who was running for Congress with the Green Party, made few public appearances and had no campaign website. Her lack of social media led to her own party accidentally posting an image of the wrong Athena Eastwood.

Pallack, who co-founded the Arizona Luminaria, attended MuckRock and Sunlight Research Center’s Candidate Accountability Training, provided through the Knight Election Hub.

During this training, reporters learned how to obtain a candidate’s personal financial disclosures. Personal financial disclosures can reveal a lot about a candidate, including personal ties to donors, income streams and legal history. They include income, assets, gifts, travel expenses, reimbursements and more.

Using the U.S. House Clerk to obtain the candidate’s personal financial disclosure and voter registration documents, Pallack and Washington were able to uncover that Eastwood changed her name and party affiliation as primary voting started. Eastwood had previously registered as an independent voter, but also previously registered as a Democrat.

“Training from Sunlight Research Center helped us level up the work we were already doing to check the backgrounds of candidates in certain races that our local audience wanted us to focus on,” said Pallack, a longtime reporter in this swing state.

“We’ll continue using the training resources in the future to methodically expand the number of candidate background checks we do as a service to readers.”

Following this reporting on her party history, Eastwood created a social media account on X (formerly Twitter), paid the fee to get verified and uploaded a photo of herself she had sent a reporter.

Eastwood ultimately did not win the seat, but the candidate created a competitive race in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, with the Democrat Kirsten Engel conceding the race to Republican Juan Ciscomani, who led by 6,867 votes. Eastwood earned 10,759 votes.

Image Credit: CHUYN from Canva