Politicians, lobbyists donate after plane crash involving Arizona senator's father

An Arizona state senator's GoFundMe campaign has exceeded its $23,000 goal after an airplane crash paralyzed his father and killed an Ohio man.

Politicians, lobbyists and activists contributed nearly half the total, with donations ranging from $25 to $5,000. Lawmakers from both parties donated, as did several registered lobbyists at the state capitol, blurring the line between charitable donations and the appearance of influence peddling.

"I was grateful for any help that came in," said state Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, who started the online fund on Aug. 21. "I didn't screen that help."

Mesnard's father is Florida charter plane business owner and former U.S. Air Force pilot Dan Mesnard. He was flying his kit-built Velocity Twin airplane out of Kaolin Field Airport in Sandersville, Georgia, on Aug. 1 when the plane suffered what J.D. Mesnard later described as an engine failure and plunged into a boggy field.

A witness reported that the plane's engine "seemed to change pitch" and the aircraft "banked right" before plummeting, according to an initial report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The crash left Dan Mesnard, 68, with paraplegia. His friend and passenger, Ohio resident Tim Fiser, 69, died from his injuries two days later.

The Mesnard family needed to raise funds for the unexpected cost of extracting the airplane wreckage from the bog to allow the National Transportation Safety Board to perform a more thorough inspection that could prove the crash was caused by something other than pilot error, J.D. Mesnard explained.

He tweeted on X about the GoFundMe campaign on Aug. 28. It's now closed and Mesnard said he's transferred the $25,205 it collected to his father, who has declined any media interviews.

"I'm not sure what I could have done differently," he said. "I didn't benefit from it in any sort of way."

The GoFundMe donor list shows that the longtime legislator and former house speaker has many friends on both sides of the political aisle.

Seven Republican and six Democratic current and former lawmakers gave a total of $2,150 to the fund — a diverse group that includes both Sens. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, and Lela Alston, D-Phoenix. Two newly appointed senators, Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix, and Flavio Bravo, D-Phoenix, chipped in.

"I've never even had a conversation with Sen. Mesnard," Bravo said, who donated $50 after seeing Mesnard's social media post. "I felt it was to show camaraderie."

After sitting in for another senator this month on the contentious Committee for Director Nominations, Bravo added, "We need more of that."

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Lobbyists and activists pitched in

The GoFundMe donor list includes two dozen registered Arizona lobbyists who together raised $3,950 for the fund.

Chelsea McGuire, a lobbyist and assistant director of external affairs for the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, which works closely with the Arizona Legislature to improve water infrastructure, acknowledged that she doesn't know Mesnard "all that well," but felt she could help after seeing his post on X. She gave $50.

"We really are a capitol community," she said, adding that "it's always hard when you mix politics with anything."

The list also includes notable names in local politics like Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, former Tempe City Councilmember Lauren Kuby, conservative Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi, lobbyist and policymaker Steve Twist, 2020 "alternate" elector for Trump Nancy Cottle and state GOP Party Chair Jeff DeWit.

Randy Kendrick, a self-described "activist donor" who has given millions of dollars to conservative causes and candidates in recent years, provided the top donation of $5,000. She contributed $5,300 to Mesnard's reelection campaign in 2022 — he was one of numerous Republican candidates she helped out.

Her GoFundMe donation had "nothing to do with" her political spending, Kendrick said, adding that she hoped "people could drop their cynicism for a minute."

"Somebody sent me the link to the GoFundMe page — I just reacted to it because of my life experience," she said, relating how her father was killed in a U.S. Air Force plane crash in 1956, when she was 10. Her mother remarried another Air Force pilot, and Kendrick's first husband was an Air Force pilot, she said.

"I've lived this life, so when I hear about a pilot suffering, I just immediately want to help."

The donations are legal, but Mesnard "should be aware of the optics of this," said John Pelissero, a senior scholar in government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

"It's very easy to infer that there is something expected by the lobbyists donating to this," Pelissero said. "Maybe they have legislation pending in the future that they would expect the senator to support because they stepped up and helped his family in a time of need."

'Long road' ahead for injured pilot

Dan Mesnard ran a small airplane charter service on Merritt Island, Florida, and "had some funds, but not like $24,000," Mesnard said.

Extraction of the airplane wreckage is expected to take place Monday or Tuesday now that the family can pay for its cost, Mesnard said.

Investigators then will examine the parts in a hangar. Mesnard hopes they find evidence that shows his father did not cause the crash and that he made every maneuver possible in the short seconds they had to try to save himself and Fiser.

His father and his friend had been making their way back to Florida after attending an aviation event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, when the "engine just died" after takeoff at less than 600 feet off the ground, Mesnard said.

Struggling to control the plane, Dan Mesnard spotted a clear patch among the trees and guided the plane in for what he hoped would be "the softest possible crash landing." Both men were ejected from the plane. Mesnard's father shattered a vertebrae. He's still recovering in a Georgia physical rehabilitation center from a six-hour surgery.

"I've been studying up on spinal cord injuries," said Mesnard, a consultant and college political science instructor. "It's going to be a long road."

Reach the reporter at rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @raystern.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ senator J.D. Mesnard starts GoFundMe campaign for father