As the GOP-led Arizona Senate’s 2020 election audit in Maricopa County comes to a close, strategists in the state agree Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs stands to emerge as one of its main benefactors.
Not quite a household name before the November election, Hobbs barnstormed into the national consciousness by raising the alarm about the audit in recent months and warning democracy itself is under attack. Later, at the beginning of June, she announced a bid for governor in 2022.
Chuck Coughlin, the president and CEO of HighGround Inc., a conservative Arizona-based political consulting firm, told the Washington Examiner the audit “is putting her on the evening news and driving her name ID through the roof with those constituencies that she will need to win a gubernatorial election.”
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He also noted Hobbs has “no real depth of policy experience,” comparing the outlook for the Democrats on the audit to be as if it’s “like T-ball.”
“Republicans are putting [the ball] on the tee, and [the Democrats are] hitting it out of the park,” Coughlin stated.
Mike Nobel, chief of research and managing partner of OH Predictive Insights, told the Washington Examiner Hobbs has “probably been on CNN and MSNBC more in the last four or five months than she probably ever has been ever.”
Before becoming secretary of state in 2019, Hobbs was the minority leader in the Arizona state Senate. She has a master’s degree in social work from Arizona State University. In November, Hobbs came under fire for old tweets that said former President Donald Trump was “on the side of the freaking Nazis” and that he had a “neo-Nazi base.”
Hobbs has been villainized by Republicans in the state. GOP lawmakers have moved to limit the secretary of state’s powers by putting Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich in charge of defending all lawsuits through the end of their current terms.
Hobbs announced her bid for governor on June 2, raising more than $1 million in 2021, her campaign announced a week later. About $200,000 of that was raised in the two days after she entered the race. According to Hobbs’s team, 80% of those donations came from Arizonans, while the total number of individual contributors exceeded 13,000, according to Hobbs’s team.
Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes out of more than 3.3 million across the state. His lead was due partly to his advantage in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, where the Democrat got nearly 45,000 more votes than Trump. Roughly 2.1 million ballots were cast in the county.
State Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican who is spearheading the review, has said the audit is not meant to overturn the 2020 election results but rather to restore trust in the system and influence possible changes to voting laws. Still, the audit has attracted GOP lawmakers from states across the country eager to curry favor with Trump, who insists the November election was stolen due to fraud, as they press for copycat audits.
This comes after courts roundly dismissed dozens of lawsuits while state and federal officials defended the integrity of the 2020 election, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under Trump, which released a statement in November noting the election “the most secure in American history.”
The findings of the Maricopa County audit, which includes a hand recount and inspection of the ballots, are expected to be released in a report later this summer.
Arizona Republican strategist Stan Barnes, told the Washington Examiner the Maricopa County audit is “serving the purpose of both parties,” and they’re both “happy about it.”
“The Democrats are happy about it because they believe it’s a joke, and they can use that joke to win votes that they would normally not get in the general election, 2022,” he said. “Republicans believe it is a useful political experience to prove to their base constituency that they are on top of these issues and care about election integrity, which is in doubt among many Republicans.”
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Barnes said he believes Republicans in the state Senate who are supporting the audit are “responding to a constituency” and that they are “not crazy, and they’re not offended.”
Nobel also predicted Democrats would “not let [the audit] go, and they’re going to try to remind voters” of it. In contrast, the GOP will “try to put this in the back seat,” though he expects it will have “election implications on the midterms,” which could benefit Hobbs’s candidacy.
The race for governor is already a crowded one, but the incumbent, Republican Doug Ducey, is in his second term and restricted from seeking a third consecutive term.
