"What are her proactive priorities?”

Nearly 100 days into the first Democratic governorship in a generation, Hobbs' allies and observers still don't know what she really wants.

Next Wednesday officially marks Gov. Katie Hobbs’ first 100 days as leader of the state, offering both a natural reflection point and gimmicky benchmark for success that politicians can’t resist. 

When Hobbs took office in January, she announced a “Bold Agenda for First 100 Days,” which she pledged would include “100 actions she will take as governor to help build an Arizona for everyone.” 

At the time, Hobbs didn’t provide a list of what those actions would be¹. Now, as we approach the end of her first 100 days, Hobbs’ office still won’t say what those 100 actions were. 

“We are finalizing the list for public distribution,” Chief of Staff Allie Bones said in response to our questions and public records requests for their tracking sheet. 

Twitter and Substack are in some kind of tech nerd war, so we aren’t able to embed tweets today.

It certainly has been an action-packed (nearly) 100 days. 

Hobbs has signed 27 bills, as of Thursday evening. She has vetoed 37. Many more sit on her desk. She signed 10 executive orders so far, traveled to two foreign countries, announced new trade offices in Asia, held countless meetings with civic groups and dignitaries and formed more task forces than we can count. 

That’s got to be 100 actions, right?

Perhaps it’s not the actual number of actions she takes that matters, but rather the overall quality of the actions and effectiveness of their sum in advancing her goals.

So we spent the last few days talking to Hobbs’ allies, lobbyists, lawmakers, consultants, staffers, and other seasoned politicos from both parties about the victories and failures, strengths and weaknesses, they see in Hobbs’ first nearly 100 days in office. In order to allow them to speak freely, we agreed to either not quote them directly or not use names.

We also created a timeline of the memorable milestones and headlines in Hobbs’ first 100 days, which we’ll send to paid subscribers as an added bonus on Wednesday, Hobbs’ official 100th day. Become a paid subscriber now so you won’t miss it.

What emerged from those conversations was a picture of a rudderless ship — an organization that doesn’t know its destination or doesn’t have the tools to get there. Hobbs has yet to signal the handful of issues that she’s truly willing to fight for this year and beyond. 

Her friends and allies privately complain that although her values are clear, her legislative and executive priorities and strategy for achieving them are not. 

Her political opponents, meanwhile, are a little bewildered.

“Nobody knows what Katie Hobbs wants to do. And I don’t think she knows what she wants to do. And that makes it hard to negotiate with her,” one Republican said.

The theme comes up frequently. When 12News’ Brahm Resnik asked his guests on “Sunday Square Off” last week what she’s done right and wrong, strategist Stacy Pearson summarized the Democratic view, saying Hobbs has done a good job of establishing herself as a backstop against the Legislature’s bad ideas. 

“Now that she has said ‘no,’ what are her proactive priorities?” Pearson asked. “Does she want to deal with water? Does she fund education? Does she want to raise the (school spending cap) permanently? Does she want to tackle housing and homelessness? That’s what she really needs to define moving forward.”

Among Capitol insiders, complaints about new staff are common, as the incoming administration is still struggling to define their roles and be responsive amid a crushing workload. On the Ninth Floor, there’s an undercurrent of discontent about the campaign staff that still hovers in the governor’s orbit. Among her allies outside the office, there’s some frustration that a lack of internal leadership and clear objectives is squandering time and opportunities. 

Last week, Hobbs fired her press secretary over an offensive tweet that went viral. The office then announced a full “staff reorganization” that included firing the spokesperson’s boss, creating a new deputy chief of staff position and changing titles for several other employees. The reorganization was executed while Hobbs was out of town. 

Growing pains and personnel drama are typical problems that plague most new administrations, to varying degrees. But her supporters worry, and opponents gloat, that it’s also indicative of a larger problem: Hobbs’ inability to manage the largest, most powerful office in the state. 

To be fair, Hobbs has a tougher job than perhaps any predecessor or contemporary in modern history. 

Only five other Democratic governors in the nation face Republican-led legislatures. The Arizona Legislature, the main body with which Hobbs has to negotiate her agenda, is as far-right as they come. The moderate wing of the party scarcely exists anymore, and the few moderate Republicans left don’t want to be seen as cooperating with the Democratic governor for fear of drawing a primary challenge. 

A few of the lawmakers don’t even believe Hobbs won the governorship. During her State of the State address, some turned their backs to her or left the building. 

Hobbs frequently touts her open door policy for lawmakers. But it’s not lost on lawmakers that the governor, a legislative veteran and former Senate Democratic leader, hasn’t come down to the Legislature to push her agenda in person, either.

The Phoenix New Times dubbed Hobbs “The Veto Queen” in a recent profile about her first 100 days, noting those veto stamps are an important part of the job and of her campaign strategy to flip the Legislature blue. But the title isn’t going to help advance her legislative agenda this year or next. 

Not long ago, Hobbs caught a baseball game with one of the few people who might understand her dilemma, former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who had plenty of fights with the Republican Legislature in her day. But it’s not like she can really commiserate — Napolitano left Arizona before the Tea Party wave. 

Twenty years ago, Napolitano had little problem getting her department heads through the Republican-controlled Senate. Today, Senate confirmation hearings are bruising and highly partisan, full of pointed political questions and criticisms.

“Jake Hoffman is a unique challenge,” one Democratic ally noted, referring to the state senator who leads the legislative freedom caucus and chairs the Senate committee set up to vet Hobbs’ nominees.

Hobbs’ staff is all new to the job, too. There are few experienced Democratic gubernatorial staffers left from the Napolitano administration. While many of her employees followed Hobbs from the Secretary of State’s Office to the Ninth Floor, the two offices are “totally different,” as Jan Brewer, the former governor and secretary of state, once noted.

Not everyone thinks Hobbs’ office has been adrift. Focusing on her strategy for dealing with the Legislature (or lack thereof) misses the big picture, some allies said.

Hobbs was never counting on legislative wins. Instead, she’s focusing on setting up her cabinet in a deliberate way to strengthen her administration for the next three and three-quarter years, one source said, pointing specifically to actions and appointments at the beleaguered Department of Corrections that will give her the power to enact executive reforms that she likely couldn’t push through the Republican Legislature. 

“Chaotic is a word I would use in some of the staffing and changes and all that stuff, but I don’t think they’re rudderless in the direction they want to go,” one Hobbs supporter said.

The press will always focus on the drama, like the department head Hobbs hired, then fired, who then publicly criticized her. We love the episodes that make politicians look bad, but that usually matter little in the bigger scheme of things. 

We underemphasize their wins, especially the incremental ones. 

Task forces, executive orders, regulatory changes and lawsuits that seem trivial now can blossom into big deals. 

Hobbs’ task force to study Arizona’s death penalty procedures, for instance, was part of a coordinated strategy with Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes to halt an execution, stare down the Arizona Supreme Court and effectively get it to declare the governor has the sole right to decide when and if the state can carry out executions. 

Hobbs’ administration has already scored a lot of small wins, and, her supporters say, has planted the seeds for larger victories down the road.

Already, she has used her executive authority to order the Department of Administration to develop rules protecting LGBTQ+ state employees from discrimination and come up with a better paid family sick leave plan for state employees.

She released a report that had been buried by her predecessor showing the West Valley has far less water than previously thought. And she created a water policy council tasked with developing recommendations to overhaul the state’s Groundwater Management Act, a critical update that could prove to be one of the most consequential fights of her administration. 

Hobbs blocked federal COVID-19 funds that former Gov. Doug Ducey had committed in his final weeks in office and redirected them to her priorities, like schools. 

She has even found a handful of Republican bills that align with her values, notably a bill to give more money to people being evicted from mobile home parks.

And she has used her status as the state’s top Democrat to raise money to flip the Legislature into Democrats’ hands so her progressive policy platform can actually succeed in Arizona. 

Still, her observers and allies have found her approach to picking battles to be scattershot at times, like when she abruptly fired the whole Arizona-Mexico Commission or supported an underdog candidate for the Arizona Democratic Party chair race, then didn’t even congratulate the winner in her tweets congratulating other party leaders on their election. 

It’s not necessarily that the instincts were wrong, her allies say, but that the plans weren’t well-executed or explained. At best, the office seems to be employing reactionary tactics, one ally said, but never a cohesive strategy. 

One Democrat said the overarching theme of Hobbs’ first 100 days has been attempting to build “a sustainable base of power for her folks.” That’s a worthy goal, the person who presented the theory said. 

While even Hobbs’ staunchest supporters privately acknowledge her administration is still getting its sea legs, they insist that Hobbs’ is ushering in a new era of Democratic government that will have a generational impact. People under age 35 have never before voted for a successful Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, the same Democrat noted. 

The overarching priority right now shouldn’t necessarily be a legislative or executive agenda, they argued, but building a machine that will uplift the next generation of Democratic leaders, inside and outside of elected office. 

And, anyway, it’s stupid to measure her by 100 days, they suggested, considering she still has another 1,360 days to go in her first term. 

“We are in a grace period where they can have lots of mistakes, but not the same mistake twice,” the Democrat said. “When those reactive behaviors start to become habit, then it’s a problem.”

1. The press release announcing the bold actions linked to her priorities page, which includes 23 bullet points of broad objectives in six categories. Most are lofty goals like “free early childhood education for students and affordable child care for parents” that probably aren’t part of the 100-day plan.