by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Jul 23, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
15 months. That is how much time we have left until Arizona can elect a new governor, and it couldn’t come soon enough.
Since taking office in 2023, Katie Hobbs has been a complete disaster. The heights of her corruption have certainly been well documented. From her illegal use of public resources to solicit money for her inauguration, to an alleged pay-to-play scheme between Hobbs and an Arizona group home that donated to her inauguration, to shelling out $700,000 to a company owned by the brother of the now-former Office of Tourism Director to create a new state logo, Hobbs has proven that the people of Arizona are her lowest priority. And there are no signs that will change any time soon.
In the latest reveal of her efforts to turn her office into a jobs program for her political friends, it was discovered that Hobbs handed out nearly $600,000 in taxpayer money to a former Democrat politician and her assistant for two newly created jobs. These just add to the long line of other phony baloney jobs Hobbs has created so that her buddies can get paid six-figure salaries to sit around and do nothing on your dime. In fact, just last year, she added six new jobs in the newly created Office of Resiliency (whatever that is), four new employees in the Office of Tribal Relations, and three new in-house attorneys, to name a few. All total, Hobbs has increased executive employment costs by over 50%!
With all these new government jobs, you would think Arizona must be leading the way in the nation for job creation, but no. It’s just the opposite…
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by Jonathan Eberle | Jul 9, 2025 | News
By Jonathan Eberle |
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has set a new record for vetoes in a single legislative session, rejecting 178 bills passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, surpassing her previous record of 143 in 2023. While Hobbs wielded her veto pen often, she also signed 264 bills into law.
The legislative session, which ended in June, underscored the deep ideological divide between the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers, with repeated clashes over immigration, election integrity, and social policy. Still, some bipartisan efforts did make it to the governor’s desk and gained her approval.
National Security and Border Policy
Hobbs approved Senate Bill 1082, a measure barring foreign adversaries—including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—from purchasing land in Arizona. The governor said the law would help protect military bases and infrastructure amid rising global tensions.
Yet, she vetoed a similar proposal, SB 1109, that targeted only China, along with a string of more aggressive border enforcement bills. Notably, SB 1164, known as the Arizona ICE Act, and HB 2099, both aimed to expand cooperation between state and federal authorities on immigration. Hobbs argued that decisions about immigration policy should remain in the hands of Arizonans, not Washington politicians.
Election Integrity Measures
Election security was another flashpoint. Hobbs rejected several Republican-sponsored bills she claimed would restrict voting access. Among them were:
- HB 2017, which would have capped voting precincts and eliminated on-site voting centers.
- HB 2046, a proposed change to audit procedures that Hobbs called inefficient.
- HB 2050, requiring daily updates on signature mismatches and enabling political party access to provisional ballots.
She also vetoed HB 2703, which sought to speed up election result reporting by cutting off ballot drop-offs on Election Day, calling it a form of voter suppression.
Education Policy
On education, Hobbs opposed efforts she viewed as punitive or politically motivated. She rejected:
- SB 1694, which would have barred state funding for higher ed institutions offering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) courses.
- HB 2610, which would have allowed for the removal of school boards in financially mismanaged districts.
Conversely, she signed HB 2880, prohibiting unauthorized encampments on college campuses, and HB 2164, banning public schools from offering foods with synthetic chemicals like red dye 3 and potassium bromate.
Economic Legislation
Hobbs approved a slate of bills aimed at bolstering the state’s economy:
- HB 2704 greenlights renovations to Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, without raising taxes.
- SB 1182 ensures that construction crews can work early morning hours during Arizona’s scorching summers.
- HB 2119 increases transparency by requiring municipalities to give the public at least 60 days’ notice before voting on tax hikes.
This year’s record-setting number of vetoes highlights the persistent friction between Hobbs and the Legislature. While Republicans argue their legislation reflects the will of Arizona voters, Hobbs maintains that many of the bills would have restricted personal freedoms, hurt vulnerable communities, or created unnecessary bureaucracy.
With more sessions ahead and no signs of a political truce, Arizona’s divided government is likely to remain locked in debate.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Jonathan Eberle | Jun 26, 2025 | News
By Jonathan Eberle |
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs on Tuesday vetoed a continuation budget passed earlier in the day by the state House of Representatives, sharply criticizing House Republicans for what she called “pointless political grandstanding” just days before the June 30 budget deadline.
The House-passed stopgap measure aimed to keep the government operating past the end of the fiscal year while negotiations continued over a full budget agreement. But Hobbs swiftly rejected the proposal, calling it a “sham budget” that threatens critical state services and derails the bipartisan progress already made in the Senate.
“For months, I worked with leaders of both parties, in both chambers, to craft a bipartisan, balanced, and fiscally responsible budget that the majority of Senate Republicans support,” Hobbs claimed in a statement. “That budget has pay raises for State Troopers and firefighters, cuts taxes on small businesses, invests in combatting Veterans homelessness, and makes childcare more affordable and accessible.”
The governor’s veto comes amid rising tensions between the House and executive branch. House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-LD29) had framed the continuation budget as a responsible step to avoid a shutdown after the Senate-negotiated agreement failed to garner enough support in his chamber. “We owe it to the people we serve to take the time needed to get this right,” Montenegro said. “This continuation budget ensures state services remain funded while giving lawmakers the time to work toward a better, more responsible solution.”
Governor Hobbs, however, dismissed that reasoning and accused House Republicans of endangering essential state services for political gain. “I have long made clear that both of the partisan and reckless House Republican budgets are unacceptable,” she said. “They gut public safety, slash health care for Arizonans, harm businesses, fail to lower costs, and leave our Veterans out in the cold.”
With just five days remaining before the state’s fiscal year ends, the legislature remains without an approved budget. Hobbs urged lawmakers to abandon political brinkmanship and adopt the bipartisan budget already passed by the Senate.
“Now, it’s time for House Republican leadership to move past their political stunts and work productively with their colleagues before they force an unnecessary state government shutdown of their own creation,” she said.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Matthew Holloway | Jun 12, 2025 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
Arizona’s embattled Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs is facing new scorn and a veto override threat from Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Steve Montenegro after what Rep. Michael Way (R-LD15) called her “most disgraceful veto yet,” of the Antisemitism in Education Act. The act, known also as HB 2867, was passed by the legislature on June 4th. If enacted, it would have “prohibit(ed) teachers, administrators, and university faculty from promoting antisemitism or forcing students to support antisemitic viewpoints in exchange for credit or advancement.” It also would have prohibited the use of public funds for “antisemitic instruction, training, or programming.”
The seemingly straightforward bill, sponsored by Way, was expected to meet with Hobbs’ approval with the Republican saying Wednesday, “This should be an easy decision for the governor. The Legislature has done its job. The public supports this. Now it’s up to the governor to do hers and show that Arizona won’t tolerate antisemitism in public education.”
But this wasn’t to be. Hobbs panned the bill, armed with a letter from Lori Shepherd of The Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center in which she emphasized inviting students “to ask tough questions about the legacy of the Holocaust today… that often touch on the history of Zionism, the founding of the State of Israel, and the persistence of global antisemitism.”
Hobbs claimed, “This bill is not about antisemitism; it’s about attacking our teachers.” She added, “It puts an unacceptable level of personal liability in place for our public school, community college, and university educators and staff, opening them up to threats of personally costly lawsuits.”
She contended the bill, “sets a dangerous precedent that unfairly targets public school teachers while shielding private school staff,” and characterized it as an attempt by the legislature to “single out and attack our public education system.”
Rep. Way quickly took to X to express his outrage writing, “In her most disgraceful veto yet, Governor Hobbs struck down a bipartisan bill to stop antisemitism in Arizona schools. I am deeply disappointed by her decision—paying lip service to opposing antisemitism while backing away from a law with real teeth. Instead of standing with Jewish students and faculty, she sided with those who promote hate and hostility on campus. This bill was aimed at prohibiting the teaching of egregious and blatant antisemitic content. To suggest that it threatened the speech of most Arizona teachers is disingenuous at best. House Republicans acted to confront antisemitism—Hobbs’ veto protects it. I will continue to stand with the Jewish community in Arizona and in my district to ensure taxpayer dollars are never used to fund violent political indoctrination.”
Speaker Steve Montenegro addressed the veto as well just over an hour later in a statement posted to X, vowing to move to a veto override before the end of the legislative session. He wrote, “Katie Hobbs has issued hundreds of misguided vetoes to date, but THIS one bolstering the hateful teachings of antisemitism in public school classrooms takes the cake. Every child deserves a quality education free of the abhorrent rhetoric that promotes hostility toward our Jewish communities. This veto is beyond the pale, and the House WILL proceed with a veto override before this session adjourns.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by Michael Way | Jun 5, 2025 | Opinion
By Representative Michael Way |
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has signaled again and again that she is so committed to the dogma of the most extreme elements of her party that she’s willing to ignore wide swaths of the Arizona public and veto the most commonsense bills. The most recent is her veto of my bill, HB2868, that would have ended taxpayer-funded DEI in K-12 schools and public universities. She claims (disingenuously, of course) that such a commonsense prohibition will “jeopardize the continued stability” of Arizona’s universities and community colleges. How exactly, is intentionally left unclear. This adherence to extreme ideology by a blue governor in a red state is not unique to Arizona. Kentucky’s Governor, Andy Beshear, just did the same.
DEI—or “diversity, equity, and inclusion”—is the slick marketing name for what is a dangerous, bigoted, and divisive ideology. It’s actually about ideological sameness, inequity of opportunity, and exclusion. Today, it flavors the instruction in our K-12 schools, exerts total control over places of higher learning, and is used as a corporate bludgeon (or “re-education” tool) for employees who espouse ideas the ruling Left deems “out of line.” Not very American.
I’m a Constitution-loving, free-speech believer. Anyone is free to like or discuss bad ideas. If you want to think individuals should be elevated because of immutable characteristics like race or gender, and not by merit, go right ahead. But taxpayers shouldn’t be funding the totalitarian use of DEI in public classrooms. Students shouldn’t have to bend the knee to ideas they don’t agree with or face social shunning or worse.
How does totalitarian DEI look in practice? Think publicly-funded DEI offices charged with implementing this thinking across departments, curricula, and in hiring, selecting employees based on their race, sex, color or ethnicity (is this not a blatant violation of the Civil Rights Act?), requiring the signing of what amounts to a DEI-statement of faith, mandating “re-education classes,” and more.
President Trump signaled nationally that the federal government was done funding this circus and states’ funding was in jeopardy if they didn’t take action to eliminate it. The President is smart and understands—beyond the constitutional ramifications—that Americans are tired of being controlled by a woke, DEI thought-police funded by their own hard-earned dollars. I’ve sensed the same frustration from my own constituents. So, while I’m a first-term legislator, this was one of my top priorities. And we got it done. I held out hope, perhaps naively, that the Governor would sign at the very least out of political self-interest. She presumably hopes to be re-elected. But she once again signaled that she either doesn’t know the state she governs (her ban on tamale trucks, anyone?) or doesn’t care. She has been vetoing with immunity until now with the only consequence being that she is universally disliked on both sides of the aisle.
My fellow Republican legislators and I are holding the line against all the really dangerous stuff she’d like to do. But we’d like to do more than stop the bad. We’d like to make some real, positive, America-first change for our constituents. And that will require a governor who knows (and actually likes) the state he or she represents.
As a father of four, I’d like my children to grow up in a world where they can think and believe what they choose, disagree openly in institutions of higher learning, and rise in their careers based on merit, not race or gender. The extreme Left is clearly intent on taking us back. Next year, Arizona voters will have a chance to let them know exactly how they feel about that, starting at the top.
Representative Michael Way serves Legislative District 15 in the Arizona State House. He makes his home in Queen Creek with his wife Raimee and their four children.
