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President Donald Trump is poised to score another Republican primary win in the July 21 Arizona gubernatorial election, where Rep. Andy Biggs, his preferred candidate, holds a commanding 50-point lead in the swing state over his rivals.
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“I hate to lose him from Congress. You know, I’m sort of torn with that,” Trump said during a Phoenix rally hosted by Turning Point USA in April. “I hate to lose him, but he’ll be a great governor.”
Trump won the Grand Canyon state by about six percentage points in the 2024 presidential race – the widest margin among the seven swing states. Two years before, Democratic incumbent Katie Hobbs, 56, barely squeaked by with less than one percentage point against Republican Kari Lake, a MAGA-coded loyalist.
Hobbs’ reelection bid started on shaky ground as the most endangered Democratic governor in this cycle, according to experts, amid the projected blue wave across the country.
But as much as the president and his allies hope that Biggs, 67, a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, can flip the swing state, the toss-up status of the governor’s race has evaporated in the Arizona heat. Forecasters have shifted their prediction this month to “leans Democratic,” citing the overall political environment (voters’ pessimistic outlook on the economy; Trump’s nosediving popularity; and Biggs’ controversial views) while opponents cite the congressman being a major player in the fake elector scheme in 2020.
“We’ve seen Arizona Republicans for statewide elections for governor reject, in particular, election deniers, and I think that that is one of the big messages that Hobbs and national Democrats are going to paint on Biggs,” said Jessica Taylor, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“The Republican Party has had trouble, I think, in nominating candidates that are broadly acceptable to more moderate voters in Arizona.”
Asked in an email interview with USA TODAY what she attributes to the change, the Arizona Democrat emphasized competing for every vote this fall. She expressed confidence in spotlighting a record she said stiff arms partisan politics in a battle to lower costs, secure the border and bringing good-paying jobs to the southwestern state.
“Honestly, I’m not paying much attention to what the pundits in Washington are saying,” Hobbs said. “I know this race is going to be close no matter what because Arizona is a swing state.”
Biggs spotlights bipartisanship, dodges 2020 election denials
Biggs has already begun an attempted political makeover in anticipation of winning Tuesday’s GOP primary aimed at making himself more moderate in the eyes of independent voters, based on his occasional bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill.
In a one-on-one phone interview with USA TODAY, he criticized Hobbs’ tenure for its record number of 541 vetoes against the Republican-controlled legislature. He said Arizona is in decline due to rising costs of living and low educational performance.
“She doesn’t get out and speak much. She kind of stays hidden,” Biggs said. “She’s already said she won’t debate me, so I think the results (of her administration) speak volumes.”
Hobbs hasn’t committed to a debate one way or another this year, he said. During the 2022 campaign she similarly faced scrutiny from Republicans and others for refusing to joust with Lake onstage.
By most basic yardsticks, the top job in Arizona should be a slam dunk for Republicans, who outnumber Democrats by over 310,000 registered voters. Independents hold the second largest share of registered voters, according to state data.
Lake, a longtime news anchor in Phoenix, was an anti-McCain conservative lightning rod in many ways. She was a major proponent of the unsubstantiated claim that Trump won the 2020 contest. She filed multiple lawsuits based on similar false statements about the 2022 governor’s race, including seeking a court order to either overturn Hobbs’ victory and declare her the winner or redo the election in a Maricopa County, Arizona.
But for all Democrats’ efforts to paint Biggs as Lake’s ideological twin, there are major differences between the two that conservatives hope will give Biggs an edge. Lake, for instance, ran heavily on MAGA-aligned conservative grievances over gender-affirming care for transgender Americans and COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.
Biggs was one of the most outspoken Republicans challenging the 2020 results, but he has attempted to pivot away from his past efforts to stand in the way of former President Joe Biden’s win in the Grand Canyon State by about 10,500 votes.
Asked three times about the 2020 election outcome, the five-term congressman told USA TODAY he wouldn’t be pitted against Trump, who remains wedded to the unsubstantiated allegations. Biggs’ prior statements questioning the 2020 election outcome and attending meetings to overturn the results will likely hound his candidacy, however, as Trump remains fixated on that loss, as was demonstrated during a July 16 primetime address.
“I’m not going to be critical against Republicans, and we have a lot of people with a lot of diverse viewpoints,” Biggs said. “The reality is we’re going to win this state by looking forward and having a vision for the state.”
Biggs’ campaign has been disciplined in its messaging, focusing mostly on his policy chops from his 14-year career in the state legislature before voters sent him to Washington. The congressman has also attempted to show a softer side, such as when he appeared to break down emotionally during the rally with Trump when telling the story of how he fell in love with his wife of 45 years, choking up as he described their belief in the opportunities Arizona holds.
“It’s time we bring that optimism back to the state,” he said. “We need to think big.”
Biggs is also ripping a page from the Democratic playbook this year by leaning into cost-of-living concerns, arguing that Hobbs has made life “tougher and more expensive” for voters.
A report released in April by the Common Sense Institute Arizona, a conservative-leaning research group, showed the state ranked at the bottom of the pack nationwide in terms of affordability, fueled largely by rising housing costs.
Another study by WalletHub released in February ranked Arizona among the lower half of states with a well-educated population.
Lorna Romero Ferguson, a Republican consultant in the state who served as a former aide to Republican Sen. John McCain and Gov. Jan Brewer, noted Briggs will be breaking new ground by making a case to midterm voters.
“He’s able to talk about more issues than the election being stolen in 2020, which seemed to be the main theme of the Kari Lake campaign,” she said.
“Obviously, the Democrats are going to try to make that a wedge issue with voters. I don’t think it carries as much weight now as it did four years ago,” Romero Ferguson added. “We’re six years past it. I think voters are honestly sick of hearing about it.”
For now, Biggs is facing fellow Rep. David Schweikert, along with political newcomers Ken Miceli, ofScottsdale, who owns Advanced Painting & Contracting, a company that specializes in repainting homes and Scott Neely, of Mesa, who sells concrete supplies. He believes the World Health Organization attempted to take power from individual nations via the COVID-19 pandemic, the USA TODAY Network previously reported.
Yet it is a primary that has largely avoided sharp elbows. That has allowed Briggs time to court independent voters and spotlight a handful of occasions he’s worked effectively with congressional Democrats over the years.
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Among the measures Biggs cites as bipartisan victories is a 2018 proposal he co-sponsored in 2018 with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, now the Democrats’ minority leader, to require more reporting from lobbyists.
“I may be conservative, but I’ve also shown that even when you’re conservative, if you look to collaborate, you can find points and ways to collaborate with even people who fundamentally disagree with you on other things,” Biggs said.
Hobbs keeps a low profile, focuses on fundraising in lead-up to midterm
Democratic governors have been at the forefront of progressives’ anti-Trump resistance movement, focusing particularly on criticism of of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign across the country.
Since Trump’s strict immigration enforcement campaign began last year almost two dozen people have been fired upon by federal immigration agents, according to a New York Times report. Out of those incidents six people have been killed including three U.S. citizens, the report said.More progressive-leaning Democrats in several primaries across the country this year leading up to the November midterms have said they want to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents killed two people this month, in Texas and Maine. But many other centrist Democrats who’ve also prevailed in midterm scrimmages this year have also embraced more targeted reforms.
“I share the fear and anger so many Arizonans feel after seeing ICE agents deny peaceful protest rights, unlawfully detain American citizens, and in Minnesota, Maine, and Texas, shoot and kill people,” Hobbs told USA TODAY.
She described those incidents, which the Trump administration has defended, as “abuses” that don’t make the U.S. safer. The governor said she has also communicated to the White House she keeps its 2024 campaign promise by staying “laser-focused on going after drug dealers, human traffickers and gang activity coming across the border.”
Hobbs told USA TODAY she is”against abolishing ICE,” and that they have a job to do enforcing U.S. immigration laws. “But they need to do their job without violating our civil rights and creating fear and chaos in our neighborhoods,” she added.
Political observers note that Hobbs, for the most part, has avoided public confrontations with the Trump administration over deployment of the National Guard and ICE agents, or the 2020 election. Those clashes have garnered her Democratic colleagues, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, massive notoriety ahead of their rumored 2028 presidential bids.
Taylor, the Cook Political Report analyst, said Hobbs isn’t seeking a national spotlight and also hasn’t always been the most popular governor in the country. A Noble Predictive Insights poll released in January, for instance, warned about a steady uptick in her job disapproval since the summer of 2024 but supporters note that has bounced back of late.
“I don’t think she’s trying to be a resistance hero in the way that you see these other candidates that likely have their eye on 2028,” she said.
Hobbs was among the 24 Democratic governors who signed a joint statement July 16 slamming Trump’s national address on U.S. elections an attempt to “undermine free and fair elections” this fall.
But supporters say that quieter approach shouldn’t be read as a sign of electoral weakness this fall, given she has won statewide twice before – as secretary of state in 2018 and her first victory for governor in 2022. The governor’s allies point out Biggs is campaigning statewide for the first time and has never faced a serious political challenger for a broader swath of the state’s electorate.
Trump won Arizona’s 5th congressional district that Biggs represents — which covers suburbs southeast of Phoenix — by roughly 20 percentage points in 2024. That is more than three times the rest of the state that year.
The congressman is also up against an incumbent in a national environment where Democrats are over-performing in conservative areas this year. In addition, this is a gubernatorial seat that the national party and its allied groups, such as the Democratic Governor’s Association, have identified as a top seat to defend.
Another Noble Predictive Insights survey released in May showed Biggs losing to Hobbs in a hypothetical general election by four percentage points. A previous poll by the same firm showed Trump with a net negative 17-point approval rating while Hobbs had a net positive 5-point approval rating.
Hobbs does not have a Democratic challenger and has been able to outpace Biggs significantly in terms of fundraising, state records show, spending more than $6 million on advertising from her own war chest. The bulk of that has been this summer, when her campaign focused on reminding voters about her of her record and middle-class upbringing.
The governor has done that following a model that helped Democrats before her win, Romero Ferguson said, pointing to the successful campaigns waged by current Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, along with former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
“They rarely say that they’re a Democrat in these ads,” she said. “They just focus more on the issues and telling their personal story. You’re seeing her follow that same model, and she did that four years ago, and she was successful with it.”
‘Sanity v. Trump’: Arizona swing voters consider fall choices
The race to November will see both sides courting undecided independents and convincible Republicans, groups Hobbs won enough support from four years ago to best Lake by a hair.
Democrats are planning to bombard Arizona voters with a deluge of attacks on Biggs, whom they argue is trying to rewrite his biography like many Trump-backed contenders have done this primary season.
Hobbs has already picked up support from notable Republicans in the state, including Cindy McCain, the wife of he late Sen. John McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain.
That might not be enough, however, to sway right-leaning independent voters such as Ernie Barten, 75, of Phoenix, who planned to support first-time candidate Neely in the GOP primary.
Barten said he felt Republicans “have the commonsense mentality,” citing the progressive lurch Democrats have taken nationally, siding with more socialist-minded candidates in primaries. Hobbs, he said, plays to her Democratic base too much and hasn’t been strong enough on border issues or supporting immigration agents.
But for other Arizonans like Blake Sacha, who is not registered with either major party, the governor’s original pitch now represents a stability that is needed to tame the country’s turbulent political climate.
“To me, there’s not much question,” he said. “It’s sanity versus Trump.”
Sacha, 61, leads an organization that has advocated for open primaries and ranked-choice voting. He voted for Democrats up and down the ballot for the first time in his life in 2022.
He rejected Lake in the last election and while he acknowledged Biggs’ bland-by-comparison demeanor, that isn’t enough to forget the potential chaos for Arizonans should Hobbs lose.
“I think he’s probably even more dangerous because he can appear sane,” Sacha said. “He does a good job of appearing polished and smooth.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump ally seeks makeover ahead of critical Arizona governor’s race
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Reporting by Phillip M. Bailey and Stacey Barchenger, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
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