Where is the money to get these "Independent" candidates on the AZ ballot coming from?

For the third time in two weeks I’ve been approached by the folks who get paid to gather signatures from AZ registered voters.

The first two times were on the same day, within a couple hours, in two different grocery store parking lots, trying to get an “Independent” candidate on the ballot to challenge Andy Biggs in CD5 (House). I can’t remember the name of the person they were trying to get on the ballot, but I declined to sign. Not because I like Andy, he’s a traitor, a horrible congressman as well as a nasty human being; but because I don’t know anything about the other person and I do not want to split votes for a Democrat running against Andy.

Just a couple minutes ago, someone else approached me to sign a petition to add an “Independent Primary” to the current AZ Democratic and Republican primaries in AZ because then the winning candidate will only need a fraction of the current signatures needed for an Independent to run in the General.

I asked all three of the signature gatherers who was paying them, but they really didn’t know. The only deep pockets I can think of is the “No Labels” party which I thought had already registered themselves as a party in AZ.

Anybody know anything? Am I just being paranoid? Although in today’s environment, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean somebody’s not out to get me 😉