JoAnna Mendoza, the presumptive Democratic nominee in an Arizona House race that is one of the tightest in the country, has drastically reduced her personal net worth in a new financial disclosure. The filing came one day after the Washington Free Beacon reported that she's a millionaire political consultant with ties to billionaire liberal megadonor George Soros.
The Free Beacon reported Monday that Mendoza, an openly bisexual political consultant and Marine Corps veteran, disclosed owning a minority stake worth between $1 million and $5 million in Radar Strategies, a political consulting firm in Arizona that works with Soros-funded nonprofits as well as with some of the most prominent Democrats in the state. Mendoza reported those figures in her 2025 financial disclosure, a document she signed under penalty of perjury, in which she disclosed she was worth up to $4.7 million when taking into account all her reported assets and liabilities. By definition, those figures make Mendoza a self-reported millionaire.
Following the publication of that report, however, the Mendoza campaign insisted in emails to the Free Beacon that it is "verifiably factually inaccurate" to report that she disclosed being a millionaire. The Mendoza campaign pointed to a new financial disclosure the Arizona Democrat filed on Tuesday in which she reported that her stake in Radar Strategies was actually worth no more than $100,000 before she forfeited her shares to run for Congress. Mendoza now says she's worth no more than $336,000 when taking into account all the reported assets and liabilities in her new disclosure, a 93 percent decrease from the figures she disclosed in her previous filing.
The drastic reduction in Mendoza's reported net worth is reminiscent of the moves made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), who denied being a multimillionaire even after she reported being worth up to $30 million in the financial disclosure statement she submitted last year. Omar later claimed the report was the product of a $30 million mistake by her accountants when she filed a revised statement in March, claiming she was worth no more than $65,000, the Free Beacon reported. The Biden Justice Department in June 2024 launched a probe into Omar's finances and her "interactions with a foreign citizen," and President Donald Trump has recently called her "crooked as hell."
Mendoza's insistence that she isn't a millionaire and her move to file a new financial disclosure to clean up her previous report indicate she views her net worth as a significant political liability as she seeks to topple incumbent Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R., Ariz.) in what's considered one of the most competitive House elections this year.
The figures in Mendoza's new financial disclosure align more closely with the image she has been seeking to cultivate on the campaign trail as a hardworking single mother who endured a Dickensian childhood of picking cotton and relying on food stamps. But they also raise new questions about her personal wealth.
The new filing reveals that Mendoza concealed her ownership of a rental property in Tucson, Ariz., in her original 2025 financial disclosure. In her initial filing, Mendoza reported that she earned nearly $21,000 in 2025 from a real estate management company but did not disclose the corresponding real estate that generated that income for her. In her new disclosure, Mendoza disclosed the existence of the property, which she says is worth between $250,000 and $500,000.
Her new filing also shows Mendoza has been dipping into her campaign coffers to pay herself a salary, which is only permissible under certain conditions, according to the Federal Election Commission. Mendoza has earned $35,600 from her campaign so far in 2026, according to her new disclosure.
As for her stake in Radar Strategies, Mendoza reported in her new filing that her stake in the firm was only worth between $50,000 and $100,000, a far cry from the $1 million to $5 million valuation she reported in her original disclosure.
Mendoza said that she was a partner of Radar Strategies from February 2024 to April 2025 and that her ownership "was forfeited back to partner stakeholders." During her time with the firm, Mendoza consulted for Americans for Contraception, a Soros-funded nonprofit group best known for its roaming, inflatable IUD, which it uses to promote greater access to birth control.
Radar Strategies also works with the Arizona Democratic Party and Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), both of whom have endorsed Mendoza's 2026 campaign.
