Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
By AZ Mirror
Lawmakers return to the Capitol today after a tense election cycle. For both Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature and expanded their majorities in November, the laser focus is on the 2026 elections as they seek to wrest control of the executive branch from Democrats.
Their sights are set on defeating Gov. Katie Hobbs, who narrowly won the governorship in 2022 by defeating Kari Lake, marking the first time since Janet Napolitano in the early 2000s that Democrats controlled the Governor’s Office. November’s elections dashed the hopes of Hobbs and the Arizona Democratic Party when an aggressive gambit to win control of the legislature for the first time since the 1960s resulted in Republicans gaining two seats in the Arizona House and an additional seat in the Senate.
The result is likely to be an emboldened GOP majority and increased partisanship in a legislature that has grown increasingly partisan over the past decade and has has a growing number of “celebrity” lawmakers, who at times seem more interested in boosting their national profiles than finding solutions to problems facing Arizonans.
Lawmakers in both parties have said that they’re already courting donors for the midterm elections, and President-election Donald Trump has already endorsed a candidate for the 2026 governor’s race.
