Your next governor has baggage

Recently, a reporter reached out to ask us if there was one comprehensive profile of Gov. Katie Hobbs they could read to study up on her — who she is as a person and as a politician.

We didn’t have any single good source to send them.

Hobbs, like the other two main candidates for governor this year, has been involved in Arizona politics for a very long time. So we sent the reporter a few old links that we thought would help shed light on who she is and what she’s done since first being elected to the Legislature in 2010.

And that got us thinking…

As longtime Arizona political journalists, we remember a lot of old stories that color the way we think about Arizona’s veteran politicians, like Hobbs and her potential GOP challengers, David Schweikert and Andy Biggs.

What if we resurrected a few of those stories for our readers?

So today, in honor of the holy weekend, we’re resurrecting a few of our favorite old tales about Arizona’s gubernatorial candidates, plus a few of our own memories mixed in.

Hopefully it gives you a sense of who they are — as people and as politicians — and helps you fill out your ballot this year.

Hobbs emerged on the Arizona political scene in 2010, when she won her first election to the House of Representatives succeeding Kyrsten Sinema, who moved over to the Senate that year representing the same district.

When Sinema ran for Congress in 2012, Hobbs followed in her footsteps yet again and won election to the Arizona Senate — where she was elected as the Democratic Caucus leader from 2015 to 2018.

In 2018, Hobbs was elected as secretary of state for four years and oversaw Arizona’s elections — including in 2020 when several Republicans tried to overturn the election and in 2021 during the Cyber Ninjas audit.

That platform turned the relatively low-key Democrat into a rising star, and helped launch her bid for governor two years later.

Back when she was at the Legislature, Hobbs continued her career as a social worker and even briefly drove for Uber in 2016 when she lost her job (and she embarrassingly had to drive lobbyists around).

But by her 2022 campaign for governor, she was touting that experience as proof of her working-class roots. Then that kind of backfired when the Arizona Republic dug into old financial disclosure reports and found that Hobbs didn’t report the income she made from Uber on the required forms.

That was hardly the hardest story that hit Hobbs on the campaign trail that year. While running as a bland, safe Democrat countering Republican candidate Kari Lake’s propensity for drama, behind the scenes, her campaign was anything but boring.

After mass frustration among campaign staffers swelled, two-thirds of them made an exodus and described an emotionally abusive environment overseen by campaign manager Nicole DeMont and ignored by Hobbs.

Another issue that dogged her campaign was that Hobbs cost the state $2.75 million when her former policy advisor in the Senate, Talonya Adams, successfully sued Hobbs for racial and gender pay discrimination. Adams was fired after complaining about earning less than her white male colleagues and won a federal jury trial.¹

During the campaign, she went golfing with an Atlantic reporter who was writing a profile on her for the liberal publication that turned out not especially flattering. This line sticks in our minds as especially astute.

Still, Hobbs won the election.

And her tenure as governor has mostly been marked by quiet technocratic governance — but there have been a number of scandals weighing on her term, starting at its inception when she accepted millions in corporate donations for her inauguration, which cost much less to produce. We also broke the story about how her tourism office director paid out $700,000 to an agency to which the director had close ties.

And while Hobbs dodged a debate with Lake back in 2022, she’s already angling to avoid one with one of her potential opponents, which makes for a great segue.

Biggs first came to the Capitol in 2002, beating out four other Republicans for a seat in his Gilbert-based district.

But his real big break came almost a decade earlier, when he won a $10 million American Family sweepstakes (and starred in a promo commercial alongside Ed McMahon and Dick Clark).

Before winning his first election, he was a regular, workaday “dirty collar” or jack of all trades lawyer, as he once told reporters.²

During his first decade in the Legislature, he pushed small government legislation, social issues and some ideas that were pretty far outside even the Republican mainstream.

Here’s a quiz we put together last year about his voting record.

In 2012, Biggs was elected as Senate president, ousting longtime Prescott lawmaker Steve Pierce, who was more ideologically moderate. The election wasn’t without controversy: Biggs pulled off a surprise victory amid allegations that several members had cut deals to support him at the last minute.

His first session as Senate president was a rocky one — that year’s big fight was over whether to expand “Obamacare” coverage to more Arizonans, an idea Biggs fiercely opposed. But Gov. Jan Brewer backed the proposal and whipped votes in the Legislature to ensure it would pass.

When it became apparent that Biggs couldn’t stop it, and that Brewer had a plan to oust him as Senate president, he stood down and let a vote to expand Medicaid come to the floor rather than get removed as president.

In 2016, Biggs got another big break. Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon shocked the political world when he announced he wouldn’t seek reelection — and that he was endorsing Biggs to take his seat in Congress.

But even with that endorsement, Biggs barely eked out a victory over Republican Christine Jones in the primary. The election was so close that it went to a recount, and after a round of legal battles about which ballots should be considered valid, Biggs ultimately won by 27 votes.

In Congress, he quickly climbed the ranks of the far-right Freedom Caucus, becoming its leader in 2019.

In 2021, he helped lead the effort to reject the results of Arizona’s election in an attempt to coup Donald Trump back into the presidency. (That’s a distinction — of sorts — between him and Schweikert, who didn’t vote to throw out Arizona’s presidential election results, but did vote to throw out Pennsylvania’s results.)

Biggs is a devout Mormon (who drinks beer on occasion) and wrote a self-published book about his faith called “The Doctrine of Liberty: Insights From The Book Of Mormon,” not to mention his book arguing against forming a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution, titled “The Con of the Con-Con.”

Like the other two, Schweikert got his start at the Arizona Capitol — way back in 1992 — and stuck around for two terms until making an unsuccessful run for Congress. Then, he was appointed chair of the Arizona State Board of Equalization, which sorts out property valuation disputes, and stayed in that role for eight years.

The job requires a certain fiscal wonkiness that Schweikert has carried with him throughout his career.

Eventually, he made his way to run for Congress after a successful run in 2010 — where he’s been a relatively quiet, tax code-focused member ever since.

But that doesn’t mean his time in the halls of Congress has been scandal-free.

As his district has gone from safely conservative to toss-up, Schweikert has managed to squeeze out victories year after year — even after a royal screw-up embroiled him in controversy.

Schweikert was fined $175,000 for several campaign finance violations — like fabricating a $100,000 loan that didn’t exist and not reporting others. A House Ethics Committee investigation accused the congressman of giving misleading statements “that allowed him to evade the statute of limitations for the most egregious violations of campaign finance laws.”

The House Ethics Committee found Schweikert committed 11 campaign finance violations, and he was fined by both the committee and the Federal Election Commission.

He earned the nickname “Shady Schweikert” from GOP primary opponent Elijah Norton in 2022, who documented the misadventures of the congressman in a comic book he created and mailed out as campaign material.

Schweikert’s allies then sent out campaign mailers out that read, “Elijah Norton Isn’t Being Straight With You” and implied Norton was gay and unfit for office. Norton got a $50,000 settlement after settling with Schweikert’s homophobic homeboys.

And that wasn’t even Schweikert’s first gay-baiting campaign attack. During his 2012 GOP primary, Schweikert sent out a mailer claiming his opponent, Ben Quayle, “goes both ways.” It was a double-entendre implying that he flip-flopped on issues, and that he was bisexual.

Schweikert’s constant calls for deficit reduction — and for floating cuts to Social Security and Medicare and raising the retirement age to 69 — have earned him a reputation as a fiscal hawk, and led to some harsh criticism from opponents and constituents.

Hilariously, he also caught plenty of flack for falling asleep and missing a major vote.

Now, after managing to survive in his district for years, it could be that Schweikert saw the writing on the wall.

As the midterm elections approach in a year when Republicans are at a natural disadvantage, trying to switch offices might have been the right call for the eight-term congressman. But knocking off Biggs — who has far more support and name recognition throughout the right-wing base — will be a challenge.