Secretary of State Katie Hobbs
By Andrew Oxford | Arizona Republic
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs announced Wednesday that she will seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for Arizona governor in 2022.
Hobbs was widely expected to enter the race to succeed Republican Gov. Doug Ducey after his second term ends.
In launching her campaign, Hobbs sought to cast herself as someone who could “get the job done” — the theme of her campaign launch video that cuts from news reports about death threats she has received since the last election to national television appearances defending Arizona’s election system.
And in launching her campaign this week, Hobbs has the backdrop of an unprecedented and behind-schedule effort by the state Senate to seize and recount each of Maricopa County’s ballots along with the Legislature’s two-week recess as Republican leaders try to wrangle their restive caucuses into a budget agreement.
“We’ve seen lots of examples in the last year where government hasn’t worked for the people of Arizona. And certainly, voters I’m talking to across the state, they want leaders who are going to roll up their sleeves and get to work and solve real problems,” Hobbs said in an interview.
“And that is not what we’re seeing with the Legislature right now. They just abandoned their jobs for two weeks because they couldn’t get it done.”
While her role overseeing the last election and her criticism of the Senate’s audit has made Hobbs a target of former President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters, she is using that criticism to contrast herself with Republican leaders in the state consumed by infighting over Trump’s defeat and conspiracy theories about his loss.
“We’ve got this state government being run by conspiracy theorists right now. They are out of touch with everyday Arizonans and that’s holding us back as a state,” she said.
