Hobbs says Ariz. voters endorsed Democratic policies in mandate

"For four years, too much of our energy went into stopping bad bills,'' the Democratic governor said at a rally Tuesday at the Capitol organized by her reelection campaign. "Now, we get to pass good ones.''

Hobbs said there is a reason voters not only put her back in office but also provided Democratic majorities in both the Arizona House and Senate for the first time in six decades.

"We were given it so that we could deliver,'' she said. "And families across the state will hold us accountable if we don't do just that.''

Hobbs would not respond to a question of whether the Nov. 3 election results were less an endorsement by Arizona voters of Democrats and their ideas and more a mirror of what occurred in dozens of states across the country. Historic losses by Republicans up and down ballots were attributed to a wholesale rejection of Republican President Donald Trump and his policies that led to war in Iran, higher gasoline prices and tariffs that made many goods less affordable.

Hobbs was not alone among Democrats in her argument that the results here show voters want what Democratic candidates offered.

"We have the people, we have the mandate and we have the moral obligation to deliver,'' said Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, who, by virtue of Democrats now having 37 of the 60 Arizona House seats, will be the new speaker. "We are construing this as a mandate for affordability, as a mandate to bring down costs, as a mandate to invest in public schools.''

And Tucson Sen. Priya Sundareshan, who will lead a 20-member Democratic caucus in the 30-member Senate, said Democrats for years, while in the minority, "stood together and we fought for working families.''

"Now, I am ready to lead this Senate majority — Senate supermajority — into a new chapter and turn those priorities into results that Arizonans can feel,'' she said.

"We will fight to lower costs, to strengthen our public schools, to make health care more affordable,'' Sundareshan said. "We will work to protect our water so that the next generation can build a life here. We will work for an Arizona where everyone feels safe in their community and has a fair opportunity to get ahead.''

Mixed results on ballot measures

Both De Los Santos and Sundareshan acknowledged that, even as Arizonans turned incumbent Republican legislators out of office, they also approved several measures that were put on the ballot by GOP lawmakers over the objections of Democrats.

Those included Proposition 318, a prohibition on biological males — based on the sex assigned at birth — using restrooms and other facilities at schools that are assigned to girls. It carried with nearly 59% of the vote.

Voters also agreed by a 57-33 margin for Proposition 317 to declare drug cartels to be terrorist organizations and require the state Department of Homeland Security to do "everything within its authority to address the threat posed by drug cartels.'' And almost 60% of those who cast ballots supported Proposition 142 to add new provisions to the Arizona Constitution to prohibit so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion'' programs.

"I think those ballot measures may have been of interest to a majority of voters,'' Sundareshan said. But she does not take that as a sign of what Arizonans want Democrats to deliver, she said.

"I'm focused on making sure that what we saw in terms of the majorities — and, in our case, the supermajorities — that reflects what we talked about, the issues we talked about on our campaign trail," she said. 

De Los Santos said about the approval of those ballot measures: "Arizona is a very complicated state. It's very simplistic to think of Arizona voters as simply Democrats or Republicans.''

He also pointed out the votes on other ballot measures. "The same people who elected Donald Trump enshrined the right to abortion in our state Constitution,'' he said, referring to Proposition 139 approved by a 3-2 margin in 2024, the year Trump won Arizona.

This year was no different, De Los Santos said.

"The same people who, at the ballot box, passed some of these DEI bills that you're talking about also rejected attacks on vote by mail,'' he said, noting the defeat this year of Proposition 144.

"They also rejected Prop. 320, which effectively was a way to rob our public schools from funding,'' a proposal that would have required districts to spend 60 cents of every dollar on instruction, even if it meant taking away from other areas ranging from administration to the cost of fuel for buses and the hiring of counselors and nurses.

Hobbs cites political groundwork 

Hobbs said there is reason to believe that the victories here, especially in the state House and Senate, are due to some political groundwork she helped set up years ago.

She pointed to the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee that she co-founded after the 2012 election when she was in the state Senate, along with then-Rep. Eric Meyer. It was designed to provide a single point to do everything from recruiting candidates and helping them with polling to connecting them with local and national donors to fund their races.

"It took years and some losses that hurt, but we never stopped building,'' Hobbs said.

She said she extended that concept when she began her reelection campaign for governor.

"For the first time ever, our legislative candidates would be a part of our statewide coordinated campaign: one team, one field operation,'' she said. "So every time a volunteer knocked the door for the top of the ticket, they were also turning out supporters for legislative candidates, not just in a handful of targeted districts but in every corner of the state.''

That, Hobbs said, resulted in wins "where nobody thought they were possible.''

She named as an example "a Senate seat in Gilbert where all the pundits said we had no shot,'' where Democrat Stephanie Walsh defeated Mylie Biggs, the daughter of unsuccessful GOP gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs.

Also, Democrat Christine Marie Scianna of Surprise outpolled even incumbent GOP House Speaker Steve Montenegro in his district, though Montenegro did manage to hang on to the district's second House seat.

"And because of these wins, we can now refer to him as 'minority leader,''' Hobbs said.

Results mirrored others nationwide

That still leaves a question of whether the results in Arizona were more of an endorsement of Hobbs or a reflection of the national anti-Trump mood, particularly since the president told people to "pretend that I'm on the ballot.''

Overall, Hobbs and other Democrats on the statewide ticket in Arizona — generally considered a "purple'' state — each won their races by about 13 percentage points.

In Minnesota, Democrat Amy Klobuchar bested Republican Lisa Demuth for governor by a similar 13-point margin.

Democrat Gina Hinajosa defeated Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott in largely ruby-red Texas by 7 points. And Georgia Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated GOP contender Rick Jackson by about 9 points for governor.

At the legislative level, Democrats flipped control of at least one chamber in Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin and now control a majority of state legislatures.