Horne gets flanked

The GOP civil war marches on … 32 days to go … And thoughts and prayers for billionaires.

The Freedom Caucus slate is almost complete.

Ever since MAGA candidates swept the polls in November, Republican state Sen. Jake Hoffman has been preparing for 2026 by drafting or latching on to Republican candidates to take back the statewide offices the GOP lost in the 2022 midterm election.

Yesterday, Hoffman introduced his newest Freedom-Caucus-backed candidate: Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee.

The twist is Yee isn’t going after a Democrat on the Freedom Caucus’ behalf — she’s trying to oust fellow Republican Tom Horne as state schools superintendent.

Her angle? Horne is too weak on school vouchers.

And look, there are many, many reasons to oppose Horne — from the fact that he was widely considered a disgrace of an attorney general to the fact that his entire worldview is stuck in 1950.¹

But his gradual acceptance of his responsibility to keep people from using school vouchers as a complete scam is not one of them.

But these days, even Horne is too reasonable for the GOP.

And Yee is cashing in on that.

Yee has generally been considered a member of the reasonable wing of the party and a potential successor to Doug Ducey’s legacy of business-backed conservatism. Her ambitions to be governor are widely known — just three years ago, she ran for the office briefly before backing out of the race to make way for the inevitable nomination of Kari Lake.

But by joining up with Hoffman’s pack of MAGA fighters — including Andy Biggs for governor and Alexander Kolodin for secretary of state and two more yet-to-be-announced challengers to Republican corporation commissioners — Yee is taking a sharp pivot to the right, betting that she can outflank Horne without alienating the moderate middle.

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And while the Freedom Caucus purge attempt is bad news for Horne, it’s great news for Democrats.

Already, five Democrats are lining up for the chance to run for the office, including:

• Teresa Leyba Ruiz, the former² senior vice president of Education Forward Arizona, a nonpartisan education nonprofit,³ and the former president of Glendale Community College.

• Michael Butts, a vice principal in the Agua Fria Union High School District and member of the Roosevelt Elementary School District Governing Board who ran for the state House in 2022.

• Sam Huang, a former Chandler City Councilman who was a Republican before he became a Democrat and then briefly a “No Labels” candidate before going back to the Democrats.

• Brett Newby, an associate professor at a California-based private, nonprofit university.

• And Josh Levinski, an English teacher in El Mirage.

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face a drained Republican candidate fresh out of a bruising primary.

But Arizona Democrats have a history of failing to capitalize on opportunities.

And with no breakout star in the field, Democrats may struggle to cut through the noise of the GOP’s high-profile slugfest.

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The thing you need to know about Horne is he has been around for a long time.

He served in the state House in the 1990s, then did two terms as the state schools superintendent starting in 2002. In 2010, he was elected to the Attorney General’s Office, and in 2014, he was vanquished in the GOP primary by Mark Brnovich, who made a compelling case that Horne was corrupt.

After sitting out for eight years, Horne made his return in 2022, knocking off incumbent Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman⁴ in a surprise victory that few saw coming.

The MAGA brand was in the toilet in Arizona at the time, and the Capitol insurrection was still fresh on the minds of voters. Across the state, Trump-backed candidates fell flat — from Kari Lake to Mark Finchem to Abe Hamadeh.

Horne’s election as superintendent of public instruction was the only real bright spot for Arizona Republicans in the 2022 election. (Yee also won, but she was up for reelection. And as many pundits noted at the time, neither Horne nor Yee leaned into the MAGA brand during their campaigns.)

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One of the few who properly read the tea leaves and predicted Horne’s victory was Gaelle Esposito, a longtime Democratic lobbyist and campaign strategist.

So we called her to ask what she makes of the state of the race to become the next Arizona superintendent of public instruction. Needless to say, Esposito was pretty stoked about Yee’s entrance into the race, and she likes Democrats’ chances.

“I think it's less that there is a primary, and more that you're guaranteed to have a primary where Tom Horne will spend a lot of money, and that it's going to be a negatively focused primary,” she said. “Primaries can often be constructive, because they help you build name recognition and get earned media and do all that sorts of stuff. But, like, it can't be like a race to the bottom … And I think that's what this primary is going to be.”

The fact that none of the Democratic candidates have long political resumes can actually be a blessing, she said, assuming they have a competent team and are willing to put in the work.

Hoffman, the former Democratic superintendent, didn’t come from a background of politics, but she showed unique political instincts in her 2018 race for the office, dispatching a longtime Democratic powerbroker in the primary and winning the November election.

But in 2022, Horne outspent Hoffman by a four-to-one margin. Horne is independently wealthy, and of the roughly $1.2 million he raised for his 2022 campaign, about three-quarters of it came from his own pocket. And national Democratic groups didn’t swoop in to help Hoffman — instead training their fire further up the ballot.

It also didn’t help that Hoffman was running for reelection just after Covid, forcing her to fight the backlash to school closures.

This time, Esposito argues, the winning strategy is to lean in. School vouchers remain a boondoggle for the wealthy with no guardrails, and the culture wars have turned classrooms into ideological battlegrounds. Democrats should take a stand: stop bullying kids, let teachers teach, and refocus on learning.

If Arizona is any barometer, the GOP’s civil war over school policy may give Democrats their clearest path back to relevance — if they’re ready to take it.

Democrats could even take a page from Horne’s own 2022 campaign, which promised a return to basics like improving math and reading scores. That kind of proactive message — rooted in basic decency and accountability — might actually cut through, Esposito argued.

“With the Republican infighting, I think there's a chance to make a comeback, especially as the Trump administration becomes increasingly unhinged and unpopular, particularly with how they are handling issues around our schools and children,” she told us. “It looks like it's going to be a good year for Democrats, based on what I'm seeing, if we have elections.”

The end is in sight: Arizona’s senators returned from a three-week-long break yesterday to amend, argue about and vote on some bills. They’re adjourning again until Senate President Warren Petersen calls them back. The House is also on vacation and is set to return June 4 as the June 30 deadline to pass a budget looms. Meanwhile, Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican lawmakers are finally starting budget talks this week, but still have to contend with volatile state tax revenue projections, per Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie. Republican Sen. John Kavanagh is pushing a plan where Hobbs, Senate Republicans and House Republicans each get to decide where to put $90 million in new spending, but the House isn’t on board.

Tariffs tossed: A court blocked President Donald Trump’s tariffs through a multi-state lawsuit led by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, her office announced. Trump has enacted, retracted and postponed tariffs for several countries, and the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled those moves exceeded his authority.

The great DEI consolidation: The University of Arizona is merging six of its cultural centers for things like African American and LGBTQ student affairs into a single center, the Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. University President Suresh Garimella sent Petersen a letter listing steps he’s taking to get rid of DEI-related activities in April. The cultural centers have 80 staff members who serve 28,000 students. Meanwhile, as college enrollment is dropping nationally, Arizona State University is celebrating a record number of graduates at more than 21,000 this spring, per KJZZ’s Nick Karmia.

High and dry: Republican lawmakers and Hobbs still can’t come to a deal on regulating rural groundwater pumping, the Associated Press’ Sejal Govindarao reports. Republicans don’t like Hobbs’ proposed mandates for reducing groundwater pumping, and they’re pissed about her executive action to create an active management area in the Willcox Basin. Meanwhile, the Colorado River basin lost an amount of water about equivalent to the full capacity of Lake Mead over the past 20 years, Arizona State University hydrologists found, per the Guardian.

Legal fees and election dreams: Republican legislative leaders have spent $2.5 million on outside counsel since Mayes, a Democrat, got elected, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez reports. Arizona’s representatives spent about $1.1 million more on litigation in 2024 than in 2022, the last year Republican Mark Brnovich was AG. Senate President Petersen blamed the spending on Mayes being “MIA” — he’s challenging Mayes for the AG spot next year.

As long as readers keep supporting this newsletter, we won’t go MIA.

Painting Flagstaff red: LGBTQ+ advocates in the Flagstaff area are growing increasingly frustrated with the representation they’re receiving from U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, who supported legislation to gut transgender health services and referred to transgender science funding as “transgender animal studies,” Lookout’s Zach Bradshaw writes. Many blame the relatively blue area’s conservative representation on the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission drawing Flagstaff into a more conservative, Republican-leaning congressional district. Plus, far-right Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers represents Flagstaff at the state Senate while supporting white nationalists and trying to ban gender affirming surgeries.

“To gerrymander [Flagstaff] so that we can't possibly elect somebody that we want in office, I think is unpatriotic. It's cheating,” said Laura Carter, chair of the Northern Arizona Democratic Party. “This isn’t representative government. Our voice has been completely lost.”

Scrambling: The Arizona Department of Agriculture found bird flu at Hickman's Family Farms — the state’s largest egg producer — but officials say no infected food has entered the food supply, ABC15 writes. It’s Arizona’s second commercial farm to discover the virus this month.

This Memorial Week, we’re pouring out our drinks for all the great local publications we’ve lost over the past few decades.

And we’re offering 25% discounts to get you free readers to upgrade. (Thanks to all of you who clicked the button this week!)

But today, we’re pouring one out for our neighbors to the north.

You see, almost 30 Colorado newspapers were just gobbled up by a company that Arizonans know well.

Times Media Group — the proud new owner of 30 news organizations in Colorado — has been buying, cannibalizing and scavenging off the carcasses of Arizona’s newspapers for a long time.

It owns the formerly venerable East Valley Tribune, the Scottsdale Progress, the Peoria Times, the San Tan Sun, the Ahwatukee Foothills News and many more.

Not satisfied with gutting more than two dozen Arizona newspapers, the Times Media Group is expanding its starvation program to new markets.

The company announced the new acquisitions with great fanfare in its local papers this week. But something tells us corporate, not the few reporters left in the company, wrote those cheery articles.

Because when Times Media Group comes to your town, it’s an absolute disaster.

Here’s how Nieman Lab explained the company’s history in the Valley. (And FWIW, you can read Times Media Group founder Steve Strickbine’s defense here. It’s actually pretty thoughtful.)

“Most of the Times Media Group’s growth has come through acquisitions of local media groups, but when the company launched a new free weekly, the Queen Creek Tribune, Strickbine promised the Arizona town (population 68,000) that ‘a full-time reporter will report on town happenings, ranging from public safety and education news, to local events and obituaries.’

Three years later, the Queen Creek Tribune masthead does not list any dedicated local reporters. Instead, ‘the news department’ is listed as [one multi-publication executive editor], a photojournalist who contributes to 19 different publications in the Phoenix area, and a circulation director. Of the five stories on the Queen Creek Tribune homepage on Tuesday, four appear with ‘Tribune Staff’ bylines and one, on a local musical performance, is bylined by the executive editor.”

Anyway, support local news before Times Media Group comes for us all.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised tax breaks to the country’s richest people, but it turns out Arizona’s billionaires aren’t faring too well.

Trump’s tariff policy is eating into the pockets of Arizona’s richest residents, the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports.

Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury owner Mat Ishbia’s net worth dropped by $2.6 billion — the most of any Arizona-affiliated billionaire. Mark Shoen, who owns about a fifth of U-Haul, dropped 77 spots in world rankings and one spot in Arizona rankings on Forbes’ billionaires list. His brother, U-Haul President E. Joe Shoen, lost $300 million in his net worth.

Thoughts and prayers to Arizona’s billionaires in these trying times.

1. Trust us, we could go on… We love a good dig through the archives.

2. CORRECTION: A previous version of this piece said Leyba Ruiz works at Education Forward Arizona. She no longer works there.

3. Full disclosure: Education Forward is a sponsor of our weekly Education Agenda.

4. As far as we know, there’s no relation between Jake and Kathy Hoffman.