By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
“I’m Katie Hobbs, and the rules don’t apply to me.” That might as well run at the end of the next campaign ad featuring Arizona’s governor. Since taking office in 2023, Hobbs has been building a rap sheet of scandals that would make Minnesota Governor Tim Walz blush.
From one of the largest Medicaid fraud scandals in Arizona history to a pay-to-play scheme that has put her administration under active criminal investigation, Hobbs has taken corruption to new heights in our state. But now, her latest campaign-finance reports are raising even more troubling questions: How did more than $1 million in small-dollar contributions disappear? And why are over 46,000 of her contributors listed as unemployed?
A Million-Dollar Campaign-Finance Mystery
How many times can a campaign-finance report be amended before it starts to raise red flags? For the 2026 Quarter 2 report, the Hobbs campaign has managed to amend it 10 times so far. But why? Were there some typos or decimals in the wrong spot? Nope. Many of these amendments repeatedly changed the amount of money the Hobbs campaign reported receiving.
The biggest mystery involves more than $1.4 million in small-dollar contributions. In its original filing, Elect Katie Hobbs reported $1.426 million in exempt small contributions—donations under $100 that can be reported in aggregate. The campaign reported the same amount in its first amended filing.
But something happened in its second and third amended filings. All of a sudden, that $1.426 million dropped to $0. And then, in the fourth amended filing, nearly $400,000 suddenly reappeared.
The campaign’s total receipts also followed a similarly bizarre path, jumping from $2.64 million to $3.1 million, falling below $1.7 million, and then climbing back above $2.6 million through various amendments.
So, where did the money go?
That’s a great question. And Hobbs has yet to answer. But it’s not the only anomaly in her campaign-finance reports…
