Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state to run for governor

PHOENIX — Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who has battled Republicans seeking to perpetuate former President Trump’s lies about the results of the 2020 elections, will run for governor in a state President Biden narrowly carried last year.

Hobbs, 51, is one of only two Democrats to hold statewide office in Arizona. She won office in 2018 by a margin of just 5,700 votes out of more than 2.1 million cast in the same election that made Kyrsten Sinema the first Democrat to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate in a generation.

In two years in office, Hobbs has become one of the focal points for Arizona Republicans unhappy with Biden’s victory here. State Senate Republicans have forced an audit of Maricopa County’s election results in the face of opposition from both Hobbs and the Republican-led county Board of Supervisors.

In a video announcing her campaign, Hobbs highlights her work on election integrity in the face of the widely criticized audit.

“We had a job to do, and that job was simple: Count every vote. When you’re under attack, some would have you believe you have two choices: To fight or give in. But there’s a third option: Get the job done,” Hobbs said. “The other side isn’t offering policies to make our lives better. They’re offering conspiracies that only make our lives worse.”

In an interview with The Hill last week, Hobbs castigated the ongoing audit, which is likely to cost state taxpayers millions of dollars in legal and administrative fees.

“Their goal here is to continue to disrupt, to undermine voter confidence in our processes, and that’s going to have an impact on future elections in terms of voter confidence, and that tends to reduce voter turnout,” Hobbs told The Hill. “These are folks with a highly partisan agenda who aren’t based in reality. I think folks on both sides of the aisle see what’s going on here. This is a fringe group of Republicans who I don’t think represent the whole Republican Party, but unfortunately they’re the ones with the bully pulpit right now.”

Hobbs, a former state legislator before winning statewide office, touted her work to process backlogged rape kits and protect survivors of domestic abuse. She highlighted a measure she passed to combat the opioid epidemic, with a clip from a signing ceremony in which she shakes hands with Gov. Doug Ducey (R).

She has hired Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a leading Democratic firm, to handle polling. Chicago-based AL Media, headed by Eric Adelstein and Ann Liston, will handle Hobbs’s television advertising.

The race for the Republican nomination is likely to be crowded as prominent conservatives jockey to define the future of a post-Ducey, post-Trump Arizona. State Treasurer Kimberly Yee and state university regent Karrin Taylor Robson have already entered the race. Rep. Andy Biggs, Attorney General Mark Brnovich and several others are said to be eyeing the race as well.

Women have been traditionally underrepresented in gubernatorial contests, but not in Arizona: Four out of the last six governors of Arizona have been women, three of whom — Rose Mofford (D), Janet Napolitano (D) and Jan Brewer (R) — rose from the secretary of state’s office to take over the top job.