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Katie Hobbs’ political tightrope

How does Arizona’s Democratic governor work with a GOP legislature that won’t work with her?

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The political persona of Katie Hobbs has always been a bit obscured, at least to me.

The rawest glimpse came after Dobbs overturned Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to an abortion. In response, Hobbs tweeted out a single sentence: “F--- the patriarchy.”

This was odd beyond its crudity. The U.S. Supreme Court that decided Roe was all male. The court that overturned it had three female justices and one, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the majority.

At the time, Hobbs was the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor. The two leading contenders on the Republican side were also female, Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson. And, of course, Hobbs ended up winning the seat. Of the most recent five Arizona governors, four were women.

The Dobbs outburst would suggest a woke cultural warrior, someone viewing things through the lens of identity politics, irrespective of how distorted that view might be.

However, as secretary of state and governor, Hobbs has governed, or attempted to govern, more like a pragmatic liberal. That was on display last week with her State of the State address and proposed state budget.

Hobbs’s proposed budget isn’t fiscally conservative. According to her budget boffins, the state will enter the next fiscal year, which begins this July, with a carryforward surplus of $832 million. Hobbs proposes spending $685 million of that, leaving a reserve of just $147 million.

According to the administration’s projections, that’s enough, combined with revenue growth, to sustain state programs over the three-year planning horizon for these exercises. However, that’s only true because Hobbs borrows the legislative practice of treating recurring capital projects, such as major repairs and renovations of schools, as one-time expenses which disappear in future spending projections. Each individual instance of a major school repair, or technology upgrade, may be one-time, but they will be replaced by others. Accurately accounting for these recurring capital projects in Hobbs’s proposed budget would leave the state’s general fund in a deficit position for fiscal years 2027 and 2028.

A fiscally conservative budget would reserve somewhere in the vicinity of $500 million of the surplus to truly, and safely, maintain state programs over the three-year planning horizon.

That said, Hobbs’s budget isn’t fiscally reckless, or particularly ambitious in terms of achieving liberal objectives. Her big ask is to cut a waiting list for childcare subsidies in half. That’s the only new spending proposal that tops the $100 million mark. The other additional spending proposals for social welfare programs are in the tens of millions, or less, for such things as subsidies for school lunches and congregate care for older children in the custody of the Department of Child Safety.

What would an ambitious liberal budget look like? Well, the state has a rainy day fund of $1.5 billion. After GOP legislators squandered a $2.5 billion general fund surplus a couple of budgets back, a reasonable case could be made to dip into the fund to restore the budget cuts that followed and do other things, such as fully eliminating the childcare waiting list, restoring previous cuts to the universities, and moving state funding for K-12 education closer to the national average. This would need to be done cautiously to ensure sustainability, but the numbers could be made to work.

The health care operation in Arizona prisons is subject to withering oversight by a federal judge. A state law requires that the operation be contracted out. Conservatives like contracting out government services to private companies, believing it results in efficiencies. Liberals generally oppose the practice, and believe it is particularly inappropriate for prisons.

Given the track record and the status of the litigation, a case could be made for the state to take back over the delivery of health services in the prisons. Indeed, some activists are clamoring for that. But Hobbs merely includes a slight increase in funding for the existing system in her budget.

There is one semi-ambitious budget move that I’m actually surprised that Hobbs didn’t make. The state funding formula for K-12 education begins with what is called the base level, basically a per-pupil allotment.

State law requires that the base level be increased each year by at least the inflation rate or 2%, whichever is less. The relevant inflation measure is clocking in at 2.6%. Hobbs’s budget proposes sticking with the 2% minimum. However, if the base level increase is less than the actual rate of inflation, that’s effectively a cut in real education spending per pupil.

The state is free to increase the base level above the minimum. Increasing it to the actual inflation rate would give schools an additional $50 million or so. The argument that anything less was actually a cut would be immaculately correct.

Bruce Babbitt and Janet Napolitano were pragmatic liberals who had very successful governorships. However, they had Republican legislatures willing to work with them, respecting the will of the voters in putting them in that position. Hobbs, instead, has a GOP legislature whose main interest seems to be to nobble and inflict political damage on her to the maximum extent possible. That gives her a daunting political tightrope to negotiate.

Given the mildly liberal budget Hobbs has proposed and constrained resources, a budget compromise should be easy to negotiate. Forget Hobbs’s proposed means-testing for vouchers, fund the childcare waitlist buydown as her highest priority, establish a larger reserve to give a better shot at sustainability, then make tradeoffs over the tens of millions available for other program enhancements.

As surely as night follows day, GOP legislators won’t really negotiate with Hobbs over the budget, as easy as that would be. Instead, they will try to devise an all-GOP budget, and then attempt to cram it down her throat with a threat of a government shutdown. To accomplish that, they are talking about reviving the irresponsible pork-barrel spending approach that squandered the $2.5 billion surplus a couple of years ago.

Conventional punditry holds that Hobbs needs to put some policy victories on the board — in core areas such as housing, water, and education — to win re-election. I’m not sure that’s the case. In 2026, it may be enough for Hobbs to say that she will continue to be a check on the excesses of a MAGA legislature, while whoever her Republican opponent turns out to be will not.

Regardless, there is ample reason to doubt that the MAGA GOP legislators are willing to give Hobbs any substantive policy victories, even ones in which she does most of the compromising.

The Freedom Caucus said the quiet part out loud when they publicly stated that their primary objective this legislative session was to deny reelection to Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, and Attorney General Kris Mayes, Democrats all.

Now, politicians in both parties try to maneuver to maximize future electoral prospects for their side. However, by refusing to work constructively in good faith with Hobbs, or even allow her agency heads of her choosing, MAGA GOP legislators are defying the will of the voters.

Arizona voters chose Hobbs, Fontes, and Mayes for these positions. As they did the MAGA GOP legislators. There’s reason to doubt the wisdom or efficacy of that combination. But that was the will of the voters.

MAGA politicians claim an almost Rousseauian harmony with the will of the voters. But in this case, they are out of touch.

I think that’s pretty obvious to the voters who put Hobbs in office. Hobbs has a difficult political tightrope to negotiate. But not an impossible one.

Editor's note: Retired Arizona journalist Robert Robb opines about politics and public policy on Substack. Reach him at robtrobb@gmail.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.

Katie Hobbs, Hobbs, governor, patriarchy, Supreme Court, Dobbs, Roe, Democratic, Republican, GOP, budget, education, inflation, MAGA, government shutdown, Adrian Fontes, Kris Mayes

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