For years, the Left has been working tirelessly to flip Arizona blue. Armed with a secret network of tax-advantaged funds, political nonprofits, and union dollars, their aim has been to turn our beloved, freedom-loving state into the next Colorado or California. In fact, many groups on the Left waged high stakes to flip Republicans’ paper-thin control of the state legislature in 2024.
And how did that turn out? A historic landslide victory for President Trump while the Left actually lost ground in Arizona’s legislature. Apparently funneling millions of dollars to liberal causes doesn’t make up for bad ideas.
Now, with the 2026 midterm election a little over nine months away, the latest voter registration numbers are in, and they show an encouraging trend. Republicans have expanded their registration advantage over Democrats to 7.64%—the largest lead in state history—while Democrats continue their free fall in party registration.
Even more impressive is that these gains are not isolated to a few particular areas of our state. Every single county in Arizona has become MORE Republican since the 2024 election. That’s right. In the counties where Democrats have larger voter registration numbers than Republicans, the gap has closed. And in counties where Republicans have larger voter registration numbers than Democrats, the gap has widened. In fact, the gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in Maricopa County has increased by more than half a percent in just the past year.
Yet perhaps the most surprising trend behind this growing Republican advantage is that while Republicans have been able to register a lot of new voters, the same cannot be said for the Democrats…
In the first week of the State Legislature’s session this year, Republicans delivered a major win on our longstanding promise to provide historic relief to millions of hard-working taxpayers in the form of a $1.1 billion tax cuts package. Our action follows years of escalating costs brought about by the failed policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, where Americans struggled to pay bills, put food on the table, and save for their children’s future. The plan would have aligned Arizona’s tax code with the federal reforms championed by President Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans just this last year, targeting relief where it is needed most and reasserting the Grand Canyon State as one of the most affordable and competitive in the country.
Unfortunately, without much thought, Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed our package within hours of its passage through both chambers of the Arizona Legislature, denying real, practical relief to the taxpayers she took an oath to serve.
The governor’s veto was cruel and callous toward the people she claims to represent. It also came just weeks after she essentially claimed credit for the recently enacted federal tax cuts that were predominately due to Republicans’ foresight and execution. Her previous words rang hollow with one stroke of her pen, just as tax season is getting under way for Arizonans looking for real leadership from their state leaders.
Governor Hobbs’ veto was not so surprising; she has shot down a historic number of commonsense bills throughout her three-plus years in office. We had hoped, however, in the spirit of bipartisanship, doing the right thing, and putting taxpayers first, that the governor would sign this legislation. Unfortunately, the governor resorted to her partisan roots and adhered to the demands of the radical liberal extremists who control her every move in office.
The historic relief package sent to Governor Hobbs’ desk this month would have provided incredible results for Arizona families and job creators and again positioned our state as a national leader on this front. Our bill would have increased the child tax credit, created a new deduction for childcare expenses, and provided meaningful help for working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and job leaders across the state. Most importantly, the legislation would have given clarity to taxpayers looking to plan ahead and expecting consistency between their federal and state forms and returns.
All these efforts went for not, though, when Governor Hobbs immediately rejected this package.
The governor’s negative action on our bill shows yet again that there are inherent differences between our two parties on the all-important issue of taxes and spending. Republicans believe that Arizonans should keep more of what they earn, and that government should spend within its means—instead of inflating its budgets on the backs of hard-working citizens. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that they are entitled to more of your money to fund socialist projects and programs—like many of the ones in California, New York, and Illinois. There’s a reason why so many Americans are fleeing the aforementioned states (and others) and migrating to Arizona and other Republican-led bastions of freedom: it’s because our states are taking action to cut taxes for families and businesses alike.
In short, Republicans believe that government exists—and works—for the people who elect us at the ballot box. It’s your money, and it’s your government. We are the stewards of your hard-earned dollars, which means it is our job to ensure that government lives within its constitutional jurisdictions and sets up future generations of Americans for success and prosperity. These principles were at the heart of the Arizona tax relief package.
Despite this setback, Arizona legislative Republicans will not cease our efforts to lower taxes and keep our state affordable for all. Over the past two decades, we have authored and passed many pieces of legislation to cut taxes and reduce the cost of living, including a historic flat income tax, tax rebates, and relief for renters and small businesses—among many other cost-saving actions. We will not stand by and admit defeat when a Democrat governor places her special interest friends above hard-working taxpayers. Rather, we will redouble our efforts to put more money into the pockets of the proud men and women we humbly serve.
Contributors to this op-ed include: Senate President Warren Petersen, Senate Finance Committee Chairman J.D. Mesnard, Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, and Senate Appropriations Chairman David Farnsworth.
What’s being sold as a harmless planning document is actually a blueprint to fundamentally reshape how West Mesa residents live and move about their city. The MesaCONNECTED Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Plan has been in the works since 2021. Funded by a federal grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the plan covers a five-mile “transit corridor” in West Mesa and is intended to guide future land-use decisions in that area. At first glance, it appears benign, seemingly focused on growth and beautification. City officials repeatedly emphasize that it is not a transit plan and does not initiate any specific projects. However, taken as a whole, MesaCONNECTED lays the groundwork to transform West Mesa into what is effectively a 15-minute city (or even a 5-minute city, by their own standards) without explicitly using that label.
The plan draws inspiration from communities in Oregon and California, as well as Arizona’s own Tempe Cul-De-Sac neighborhood, all of which follow planning models that prioritize density, transit-oriented development, and reduced automobile use. The stated goal is to create fully walkable areas centered around “transit nodes” while making existing transit easier to access. The section of West Mesa encompassed in the plan includes major hubs such as Mesa Riverview, the Asian District, Mesa Community College, Banner Desert Medical Center, Downtown Mesa, and surrounding areas.
A central objective of the plan is to increase density and place housing closer to employment to “reduce vehicle miles traveled” (pg. 5). This is not a neutral goal. It assumes driving is a problem to be corrected rather than a freedom to be preserved. In a city like Mesa where families rely on personal vehicles for work, school, church, medical care, and more, designing communities to deliberately discourage driving punishes the very behavior that allowed the city to grow in the first place. Rather than responding to how residents already live, the plan attempts to reshape daily habits by making driving less practical and alternative modes more “convenient…”
In 1952, Republican Governor J. Howard Pyle appointed a 24-member Underground Water Commission to recommend a new groundwater framework for Arizona. Every member was a farmer or rancher— people who lived and worked on the land and relied on groundwater to survive.
After nine months of work and thirteen public comment sessions, the Commission issued a 172-pagereportrecommending that the Legislature adopt “correlative rights” as the new groundwater law for the state, calling it the fairest and most equitable way to apportion subterranean rights among adjoining landowners on the surface.
Farmers agreed. One testified: “The principle of correlative rights gets closer to solving the problem than any water code.” Another said that courts should eventually recognize that landowners should own the groundwater beneath their land, so long as it does not harm others—like the ad coelum doctrine and “no harm” principle described in Part 1.
Yet, the Legislature failed to act. With Democrats holding 15 of 19 Senate seats and 50 of 80 House seats, lawmakers left the issue to the courts, which rejected correlative rights in favor of “beneficial use,” leaving landowners with no legal means to protect or conserve their supplies.
It didn’t have to be this way.
We can restore private property rights to groundwater
In 1953, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected correlative rights not because the Court thought it was unfair, but rather because the Court believed it was technologically infeasible, saying: “Apportionment of subterranean percolating water between adjacent landowners is often, if not always, impossible.”
Today, that excuse no longer applies. Advances in groundwater modelling have made quantifying and allocating rights to subsurface water completely possible—especially in Arizona’s alluvial fill basins like Willcox, McMullen Valley, and the Big Chino, where the tragedy of the commons is already unfolding.
In 2011, for example, the Arizona Water Resources Development Commission issued a statewideassessment, finding that the Willcox, McMullen, and Big Chino basins contained approximately 42 million, 14 million, and 10 million acre-feet (AF) of groundwater, respectively, to a depth of 1,200 feet, providing critical data that demonstrates that implementing correlative rights is entirely feasible.
Since it’s been over seventy years since we’ve meaningfully considered correlative rights, many residents today have likely never heard of this term and would naturally have questions about how it would work, how it would benefit them, and how it would help advance our shared goals of conservation.
Here’s how it would work—using Willcox as an example
Once a basin is closed to new pumping, the groundwater is quantified and allocated to landowners based on the number of acres they own. With 42 million AF underground and about 1.2 million acres on the surface, each landowner in Willcox would receive about 35 AF per acre as a one-time “lump sum.”
For a 4-acre parcel (the minimum lot size in Cochise County), a landowner would receive 140 AF. A 160-acre quarter section would receive 5,600 AF, and a full 640-acre section would get 22,400 AF. This is similar to the proportional share-based approach utilized in oil and gas regulation.
It is also similar to the approach utilized in Arizona’s transportation basins, like Harquahala, McMullen Valley, Butler Valley, and the Big Chino. In Harquahala, the formula is 6 AF/acre annually. More acres mean more rights.
For municipal providers, lump sums would be allocated based on the acres they serve. A larger service area means a larger groundwater allocation. When residents interconnect, their allocations would transfer to the provider—allowing the provider to manage their supplies on their behalf.
State trust lands would also receive allocations, which lessees would be entitled to use through their leases. The more acres leased, the more groundwater available. In transportation basins that have large amounts of state trust land, cities would know exactly how many acres they’d need to lease to secure an assured water supply.
Additionally, landowners would be credited a proportional share of the annual natural recharge. A person owning one percent of the acres would receive one percent of the natural recharge.
Over time, these credits would add up. After five years, a person earning 0.2 AF/year would acquire a full acre-foot, while a resident with 28 acres would earn enough water annually to meet all of their household needs from recharge alone, allowing them to live off their recharge without touching their lump sum.
For lump sums, a minimum 4-acre lot would provide enough water to last 424 years. Adding recharge makes supplies last even longer. Additionally, increased recharge from proactive investments would be credited to the investor, incentivizing the development of new recharge projects.
Because the basin is closed to new pumping, existing landowners would be protected against subsequent users, like prior appropriation but without the complications. Additionally, because rights are transferable within the same basin, economic growth is still possible. Newcomers can enter, but only if they purchase land or water rights from existing users first.
To enforce all this, annual reporting requirements would be implemented, ensuring that no one pumps more than his or her fair share. Meanwhile, minimum well spacing requirements would be implemented to help ensure an even distribution across the basin, reducing impacts to existing well-owners.
Well monitoring has been a controversial issue in the past, largely because it has been seen as the camel’s nose under the tent for greater bureaucratic control. Here, however, users get certificated private property rights that can never be revoked and thus more, not less, freedom in exchange for their trouble.
For residential well owners, shared infrastructure is already possible through the adoption of water districts. A shared well drilled to 1,200 feet can provide greater long-term security than 100 wells drilled to 120 feet—allowing each landowner to access their full supply but at a substantially reduced cost.
Lastly, there would be no “safe yield” requirement. While states like California have applied correlative rights to only annual recharge, this model would not work in Arizona. In fact, the 1952 Underground Water Commission specifically rejected the California model, noting it would not provide enough water in our arid climate.
Instead, a hybrid approach is required, one that allocates rights to both the subterranean resource and the annual recharge, thereby maximizing the amount of water granted to each landowner and ensuring that every drop is accurately accounted for. That is the approach described here.
Your water, your choice
The most intriguing aspect of correlative rights is that, once the groundwater has been allocated, it’s yours to keep—permanently. If you don’t use it, there’s no risk of loss; it will still be there 10, 20, or 100 years into the future.
This stands in stark contrast to the current free-for-all described in Part 2, where leaving groundwater in the basin simply leaves more for someone else to take. Because there’s no forfeiture, landowners are free to use, conserve, lease, or transfer their water within the same basin as they see fit. The choice is theirs.
For farmers, this creates new incentives. A 160-acre farm with a center pivot may have enough water to last several years, while others may need to scale back, shift to less water-intensive crops, or acquire additional rights from others. Commercial farming is still possible, but only if land and groundwater use align, encouraging open space and land conservation.
Thus, the motivation to conserve is simple: when the property is yours, you—and you alone—are responsible for maintaining it. Once an allocation is gone, it’s gone for good, forcing users to make tough decisions and encouraging wise use. That’s the power of private property: when you own it, you protect it.
Turning water into wealth
For many rural residents, correlative rights would instantly turn an uncertain water future into a secure financial asset, creating real value that can provide both long-term water security and financial independence.
With a single AF selling at roughly $400 today, a 40-acre parcel would suddenly hold $560,000 in water value—plus an additional recharge credit worth about $200 a year, acting like an annual dividend. For someone living on a fixed income, that’s transformative.
A 160-acre quarter section would receive $2,240,000 in water value, plus $800 in annual credits, while a 640-acre full section would sit on nearly $9 million and receive $3,000 in annual recharge credits.
With outright ownership, landowners could monetize their allocations or borrow against them without pumping a single drop. Here, water is not a commodity—it’s a currency: the currency of your future, allowing rural residents to build real equity and generational wealth.
The question is: what would you do with your share?
Correlative rights can save our aquifers, farmers, and ranchers—it’s time to adopt them
For over seventy years, Arizona tried top-down bureaucratic approaches to addressing the tragedy of the commons in groundwater—but to no avail. As discussed in Part 3, what Arizona needs now is the only solution that we haven’t tried but should have adopted when rural farmers and ranchers recommended it in 1952: correlative rights.
By closing our alluvial-fill basins to outsiders who seek to pump them dry for short-term profit at the expense of others, and restoring private property rights to the groundwater beneath our feet through correlative rights, we can unlock millions of dollars’ worth of groundwater that will last thousands of years and finally give landowners the legal right and incentive to protect and conserve their supplies for themselves and future generations.
The Legislature can act. As the Arizona Supreme Court itself said in 1953: “If any change in the law is necessary, it should be made by the Legislature,” including the power to “invest” groundwater with the “character” and “attributes” of “private ownership.”
The moment to act has arrived. Imminent cutbacks to our Colorado River supply mean that our state can no longer afford the inefficiency of centralized bureaucratic control over our most precious resource. It’s time to end top-down bureaucratic control, give private property rights to groundwater back to the people, and fix a generations-old mistake.
One of my grandfathers was a proud Arizona miner. Another was a hard-working grocery store operator in a small Arizona town. Although both of these men led vastly different lives, they both were united around one very important fact for the desert they called home and were cultivating for their children and grandchildren: water is integral to survival, progress, and prosperity.
Past generations of Arizonans have understood the importance of our water future—especially with a critical source in the historic and life-giving Colorado River. Each generation has successfully built blocks on each other of water conservation, security, and innovation, allowing future men, women, and children to grow up, work, and raise their families in an environment that could support the tremendous growth of this state over the last century. Yet, as we see all around us, the exponential Arizona growth continues. The small towns my grandfathers inhabited so many years ago are becoming larger by the day. Houses, businesses, and schools continue to be built. Thousands of people move to Arizona in search of a better future. All require water to fuel and sustain the efforts and migration.
In generations past, Arizona has risen to the challenge, made the right decisions, and paved a water future for our children and grandchildren. And yet we face a new fork in the road that will determine what kind of Arizona we will pass along to our descendants.
Decisions are being made right now about the Colorado River that will shape Arizona’s water security for decades. The current rules that govern how water is shared across the West are set to expire at the end of this year, but the states that rely on the water from this river have until February 14 to comprise an agreement on future management plans. The federal government has now released draft options that could define how the river is managed well into the future. I’m thankful for the Trump administration’s willingness to listen and work with the basin states—especially Arizona—throughout this process, yet this resource is too important to our future to leave it solely in the federal government’s hands.
As Chairman of the Arizona Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Energy & Water, I’ve been deeply involved in these negotiations with local, state, Tribal, and federal partners, continuing my longtime efforts to enhance the Grand Canyon State’s water future and security. Arizona has already stepped up. We’ve conserved water, made real reductions, and passed commonsense laws to protect our long-term supply. Our farmers, cities, and businesses have done their part—and then some. The next agreement must be fair. Arizona families, farmers, and communities should not be asked to carry a heavier burden while other states avoid meaningful commitments. I’ve been clear about that in discussions with federal officials and other basin states. Cooperation remains the goal, but it has to be balanced and enforceable. The alternative is more uncertainty, more litigation, and higher costs for everyone. That’s a future I won’t leave behind for the next generation of Arizonans.
My grandfathers knew the importance of water to our state as they worked throughout their lives to build the foundation of our family and community. Their dedicated efforts are why I’ll continue fighting for a solution that protects the river, preserves Arizona agriculture, and secures a stable water future for our state. Future generations of Arizonans deserve nothing less from their public servants.
T.J. Shope is the Arizona Senate President Pro Tempore and represents Legislative District 16.
Writing at Axios, energy writer Amy Harder says “The climate agenda’s fall from grace over the past year has been stunning — in speed, scale and scope.” Harder quotes oil historian and S&P Global vice-chairman Dan Yergin as saying, “There’s no handwaving about how ‘We want to cooperate on climate.’ It’s, ‘We’re slamming the door on that issue.’ We’ve gone from over-indexing it to zero-indexing it.”
Polling has never shown climate change as being an issue of primary concern to American voters. Americans have consistently been more worried about issues that impact their daily lives today than about warnings from modern-day P.T. Barnums like U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres about some nebulous “highway to hell” and “the age of global boiling. The issue had been slowly losing its effectiveness during the Biden years even as that administration tried to memorialize the movement’s objectives in policy.
Even Democrat politicians have quit talking about the so-called “climate emergency” which used to be a central plank in their talking points list. When was the last time you heard New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, co-author with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of the “Green New Deal” introduced in 2019, talk about the supposed need to force ordinary citizens to give up their cars, flying, and vacations and spend trillions on a nationwide network of high-speed rails to save the planet? When was the last time you heard any Democrat utter the phrase “Green New Deal,” for that matter? It simply doesn’t happen anymore.
One of the motivators for the political abandonment of the climate scam by Democrats came from a pre-election analysis from the center-left Searchlight Institute last November. That memo advised Democrat candidates to avoid using the term “climate change” entirely, and to focus on the supposed cost savings to be obtained by switching to green energy solutions. Never mind that such cost savings are a myth: The truth doesn’t matter. What matters is the ability to influence voters with the message.
Therein lies the central existential threat to the movement’s survival in the coming years.
For decades, liberal politicians and climate advocates were able to advance the climate alarm agenda by creating, well, alarm among the public that the world is going to end if we don’t stop putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Always the messaging had a deadline claiming, “We only have X number of years to stop burning fossil fuels before it’s too late!” Over the past 40 years, that deadline to act has given the term “moving the goalposts” a new green meaning.
AOC claimed the drop-dead date was only 12 years in the future as she rolled out her ambition to control everyone’s daily lives in the name of climate alarm in 2019. But the very next year, in 2020, child activist Greta Thunberg moved the goalposts to a mere five years. But wait: Just a year later, Joe Biden read a script from his teleprompter that set the deadline at 10 years. It’s all so darn confusing.
No doubt, these politicians and activists wish they could erase their past claims from everyone’s memory. Their trouble is, the Internet is forever.
Advocates were even successful in convincing Barack Obama’s EPA to dummy up an Endangerment Finding declaring that carbon dioxide is in fact a “pollutant” that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act in order to save the planet. Never mind that CO2, otherwise known as plant food, the foundational basis for all life on Planet Earth: The truth doesn’t matter.
Now, it appears that the movement is inheriting the wages of decades of deception with a sudden and stunning fall from grace. It could not happen to a more deserving bunch of people.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
