Hobbs moves right

If you can’t beat them … Rest in peace … And we had better options.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is heading to the border today for a “major announcement” — seemingly announcing her plans to send the Arizona National Guard to work on the border.

It’s not the first time she has sent state troops to the border.

But coming on heels of Democrats’ massive defeat in the election, Hobbs’ pledge to “work with anyone” to secure the border, rather than join with her fellow Democratic governors in stopping Donald Trump’s plans for the largest deportation ever, is quite the pivot.

And it shows us where Hobbs is heading.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, tells us the governor is yelling “charge!”

Hobbs is up for reelection in two years, and despite all the rumblings about a Democratic challenge from Kris Mayes or Adrian Fontes, the real threat to her 2026 bid comes from the right.

Two years is a long time, and we expect to see the pendulum swinging back towards Democrats by then.

In the meantime, Hobbs is swinging to the right.

You can see it in her post-election press releases and statements, where she promises to “work with the Legislature that Arizonans elected.”

“In my first two years as governor, I’ve worked with a Republican-led Legislature to cut red tape and bring down the cost of housing, secure our border, protect our water, and repeal the 1864 total abortion ban,” she said in a press release marking the end of ballot-counting.

She has also declined to join a coalition of Democratic governors attempting to thwart Trump’s deportation plans, as Capitol scribe Howie Fischer notes.

While she prepares to send more National Guard troops to the border, Hobbs dodged Fischer’s questions about whether she would block the Department of Public Safety from helping the Trump administration deport people, or if she’ll push back on potential attempts to nationalize the Arizona National Guard to help.

She wouldn’t even pledge to stand up for DACA recipients. Trump tried to end the program during his first presidency.

That new tough-on-the-border-and-immigrants tact caught the attention of Republic columnist Elvia Díaz, whose weekend column mercilessly trashed the governor, calling her “useless,” “pathetic,” “gutless,” “the poster child of Democrats’ disastrous defeat, and “a useful tool to a disruptive and dangerous administration.”

“(I)f she’s going to help Trump, she might as well join MAGA,” Diaz wrote.

Meanwhile, as consultants debate how much of the blame Hobbs deserves for legislative Democrats’ dismal showing this month, Hobbs is promising to work with a newly empowered Republican majority that doesn’t appear inclined to meet her halfway.

“She’s running into the problem that her policies failed, they’ve failed and the voters are rejecting them. We’re not gonna hold back,” incoming House Speaker Steve Montenegro told talk show host Jeff Oravits.

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen told KTAR’s Jim Sharpe the election was a referendum on Democrats’ “wokeness.” The day he won the presidency, he announced he was reappointing election-denying Sen. Wendy Rogers to head the elections committee and Jake Hoffman to continue his work of blocking Hobbs’ nominees on the Senate Committee on Director Nominations.

Republican lawmakers are already setting their agenda on everything from school choice, to tax cuts to election reform.

Trump’s victory and that of Republicans up and down the ballot shows, yet again, that Arizona is not a blue state.

And with Hobbs' reelection campaign looming, she’ll no longer be able to rely on her well-worn veto stamp as proof she’s working for Arizonans.

Rest in peace: Arizona Senate candidate John McLean was killed in a car accident by a suspected drunk driver on Friday. He was a former aerospace engineer, worked in ocean remote sensing and ran more than 25 marathons, as we learned when completing his candidate card for the election. McLean was compelled to run for Senate after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Satisfaction guaranteed: Kari Lake and Stephen Richer reached an undisclosed settlement in his defamation case against her, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. Neither side would describe the terms of the settlement, though Richer said “both sides are satisfied.” Also, Lake didn’t get the gig of White House press secretary.

To the best of our knowledge, the settlement doesn’t includes any funding for local independent news organizations that Lake has accused of being “enemies of the people.” But you can help fund local journalism anyway.

Law of unintended consequences: Prop 139, the Arizona for Abortion Access Act, didn’t turn out to be the force-multiplier that Democrats hoped, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger writes, in part because it allowed conservative voters to deal with unpopular abortion restrictions without having it turn into a referendum against Republicans who support them.

"My wish was that (voters) would put the two together, make the connections. But that was also not the job of our campaign," Chris Love, a spokesperson for the Proposition 139 campaign, told Barchenger.

MAGA Earl: The bomb threat sent to the Cochise County Recorder’s Office on Election Day — which was one out of ten total across the state — was sent from the email “maga_earl@mailum.com” and began with: “Hello, I have planted a bomb,” the Herald/Review’s Mark Hays reports. Law enforcement checked for bombs and the building was cleared for reentry about an hour later, and the FBI said many election threats came from Russia. Those fake bomb threats hit all 15 Arizona counties, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield writes, and the one in Pima County came from a similar email address: maga_sam@mailum.com.

Keep the primaries partisan: Arizona was one of seven states to reject ballot measures that would replace party-based elections with non-partisan primaries, the Guardian writes. The opposition to open primaries and ranked-choice voting is being spearheaded by conservative groups, and previous optimism for open primaries seems to be waning.

CHIPS before he dips: The Biden administration officially gave $6.6 billion in CHIPS Act money to the TSMC semiconductor manufacturing facility in North Phoenix, but it’s unclear what the future of Biden-era infrastructure funding will be like under Trump’s presidency, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky reports.

Public servant: Nogales City Councilman Saulo Bonilla is accused of bullying yet another local resident, with one witness claiming Bonilla said he wasn’t afraid of the police being called because he had “cops wrapped around his finger, since he pays them.” The Nogales International’s Daisy Zavala Magaña writes that charges have not been brought over the altercation with a local woman that happened at a gas station in August, nor his previously reported October altercation with constituents at a parade.

“I’m a victim and you don’t portray it that way,” Bonilla complained to the paper. “It’s not me that’s the problem. It’s people that have a problem … and when I feel threatened I will react like any other person would react.”

Someone got ahold of the list of “unofficial write-ins” for president in Maricopa County, providing a tally of people, fictional characters, animals, concepts and inanimate objects that Arizonans would rather see as president than Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

Some of our favorites, in alphabetical order, include: Adam Sandler, Big Bird, Captain Jack Sparrow, Deez Nuts, “El Chapo” Guzman, God, Hawk Tuah, Jerry Garcia, Keanu Reeves, “Literally anybody else”, Marshall Mathers/Slim Shady, “None of the above,” Obi Wan Kenobi, Pedro, Rosanne Barr, Snoop Dog, The Devil, Vanilla Ice, Willy Nelson and Yosemite Sam.