A speech for a swing state

Gov. Katie Hobbs opened what could be her last-ever State of the State address yesterday by quoting Barry Goldwater.

As the face of Arizona conservatism, Goldwater is an unlikely muse for a Democratic governor.

But it’s an election year. Hobbs has to persuade a swing-state electorate to keep her in office for another four years.

In Monday’s speech, Hobbs’ centrism felt more deliberate than in years past.

She lauded her own border security efforts and denounced the transnational criminal organizations operating in Arizona. She called for tax cuts and reduced government spending. And she announced a DOGE-esque program — the Arizona Capacity and Efficiency Initiative — to weed out unnecessary spending.

But when Hobbs talked about the Trump administration, she centered her criticism on policies with broad disapproval, like FEMA denying federal aid for the towns of Globe and Miami after catastrophic flooding, or the broad cost-of-living increases tied to federal economic policy.

She didn't say a word about the ICE agents shooting American citizens and taking over American cities, including the reported coming deployment to Phoenix.

She only mentioned Donald Trump's name once — blasting him alongside Joe Biden for not reimbursing Arizona for its border security spending.

Instead, “Washington” was the villain of her speech.

Washington “cut food assistance and then held it hostage during the federal government shutdown.”

Washington slashed Medicaid funding and is also full of "bloat and waste."

And Washington elites "sneer at bipartisanship, vilify communities and put ideologies over common sense.”

Hobbs’ speech did include some nods to her base, however. She called for school voucher reform, increased public school spending and tax breaks for “hardworking families” instead of "billionaires and big corporations.”

But even her nod to "unchecked" school vouchers was a far cry from her first State of the State address three years ago. Instead of calling for a repeal of universal vouchers, she asked Republicans not to tie constitutional protections of vouchers to a renewal of Prop 123, the $300 million per-year school funding source that dried up last year.

Instead, Hobbs focused her attention on broadly popular and safe positions, like the housing crisis, fears of AI data centers and affordability.

Perhaps the most progressive policies of her speech were plans to increase taxes on short-term rentals and data centers to pay for more affordable housing and water security.

Republicans already hate the idea.

In a rebuttal video, Senate Republicans called her plans for affordability disingenuous.

Her proposed fees on short-term rentals and data centers are “costs that get passed directly on to families,” Republican Sen. TJ Shope said. Plus, Hobbs has actually grown government spending through things like “taxpayer-funded sex transition surgeries in state health care plans,” per Republican Sen. John Kavanagh.

But the contingent of Arizona’s Democratic voters who elected Hobbs four years ago have spent the past year living with the unease of Trump’s second term, and the governor’s speech lacked meaningful pushback.

It felt cautious — and aimed at securing her reelection in a conservative state.

Meanwhile, many of the wins Hobbs would point to in a reelection bid are suddenly on the chopping block.

The first major fight of the session is how Arizona conforms to the new federal tax code. Democrats want to leave out the largest corporate tax cuts, but Republicans want the full package.

Either approach would blow a significant hole in the state budget — meaning cuts are inevitable.

Hobbs, notably, secured a slate of Democratic-backed projects in last year’s spending plan.

We asked Republican Rep. Matt Gress, one of the House’s budget experts, whether those projects are now at risk.

The press usually receives an embargoed copy of the governor’s State of the State speech ahead of time, so while we have a good sense of what the governor will say, we don’t know how the room will respond.

To capture that reaction, we recorded the speech from the gallery above the main chamber and ran the audio through an analyzer.

Here are Hobbs’ lines with the loudest responses:

Before the day’s main event, lawmakers staged a few speeches of their own.

Some Republican legislators and Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller kicked off the morning with a pro-ICE press conference, where Miller announced forthcoming legislation that would make interfering with federal officers during an arrest a felony.

After protestors shouted the speakers down on the Capitol lawn, Miller and company moved their conference — and several “We support ICE” signs — inside the protester-free confines of the Senate.

Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman heeded the warning by also hosting his Freedom Caucus press conference in a Senate conference room. Hoffman held the same kind of conference last year to bash Hobbs’ governorship.

Hoffman spoke between two “Corrupt Katie Hobbs” posters, including one laid out as a checklist of transgressions, such as “breaks the law,” and “nepotism,” as if Hobbs were methodically working through a corruption to-do list.

Hoffman ran through his usual list of Hobbs-era scandals and lashed out at reporters who asked him critical questions. When Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie pressed Hoffman on whether he was fairly vetting Hobbs’ agency nominees, for example, Hoffman waved it off by calling Christie a “big media shill for the Democrats.”

And he credited his Republican colleagues — not the journalists who broke stories like Hobbs’ pay-to-play allegations — for exposing the truth.

The Legislature’s Democrats were much more pointed than Hobbs when outlining their priorities for the session in a morning press conference.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan previewed legislation to achieve their central theme this year — “An Arizona we can afford” — things like penalizing insurers who deny valid healthcare claims and preventing corporations from shifting the cost of running data centers onto ratepayers.

But Democrats are also aware there’s not a lot of actual policy change they can make in a Republican-controlled Legislature, so much of their influence this session will come from playing defense, especially against a Prop. 123 renewal that would give constitutional protections to school vouchers.