How will bolstered Republican majorities in AZ legislature contend with Hobbs in 2025?

Illustration by teddyandmia |
iStock / Getty Images Plus

Fortified Republican majorities in both chambers of the Arizona Legislature, coupled with a decisive win by Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, are likely to generate an atmospheric change at the Capitol. 

But, at least for the next two years, emboldened Republicans will still have to work with Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs — who has veto power — if they want to see their proposals codified into law. 

Republicans can get around a veto by sending issues to the ballot like they did over the past two years, but that’s not a viable solution for every proposal since each measure would lengthen the 2026 ballot and could contribute to voter fatigue.

Legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle agreed that a GOP energized by wins up and down the ballot will make for a 2025 legislative session focused on many of the issues that Republicans put at the forefront of their campaigns. But it remains to be seen if the party will work alongside Democrats in the legislature and the Governor’s Office to pass legislation with bipartisan support, or if Hobbs will meet them with an onslaught of vetoes. 

“I really think we’re going to see probably the most unified majority caucuses we’ve ever seen at the Arizona Legislature,” Scott A. Smith, a lobbyist and former chief of staff for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer with more than 30 years of experience at the Capitol, told the Arizona Mirror. 

The forces driving that unification include Trump’s win as well as the improvement from thin, one-seat majorities in both chambers, Smith said. Republicans gained one Senate seat and two in the House of Representatives. 

Top priorities for Republicans this session will include tax relief, immigration reform, ensuring that Arizona’s election results are produced more quickly and securing the state’s future water supply, Senate President Pro Tem T.J. Shope told the Mirror. 

“We ran on trying to bring costs down for everyday Arizonans, and that’s something that we’re going to work on right away,” he said. 

Shope is returning to the pro tem position that he’s held for the past two legislative sessions, under Senate President Warren Petersen, a veteran legislator from Gilbert. 

While any lawmaker can propose “statement bills” that send a message to their constituency, but they know will never make it past a vote — or Hobbs’ veto stamp — Shope said he thinks Republicans showed more restraint in the types of bills they proposed in 2024, compared to the previous year. Hobbs vetoed a record 143 bills in her first year as governor and 73 in her second. 

“I think that you saw a lot of caucus discipline last session, as opposed to possibly the first session of the Hobbs administration — there were much, much fewer vetoes,” Shope said. “And I think that we have, as a unit, done a much better job of making sure that the bills that we send up can get signed. And if they aren’t signed, the governor will regret not signing them.” 

As an example of that, he pointed to Proposition 314, approved by 61% of voters on Nov. 5, which would make it a state crime for migrants to cross Arizona’s southern border and give local police officers the power to arrest migrants who they believe have violated that law. It will also give judges authority to issue deportation orders.

The ballot measure was sent to voters by Republicans after various portions of it were either vetoed or failed to make it through the legislature. It’s unclear when or if the measure will take effect, as the law it was based on in Texas is currently tied up in litigation, and it can’t go into effect unless the Texas one is implemented. That law’s fate is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Republicans sent 11 measures to the 2024 ballot to get past a Hobbs veto, and seven of those were rejected by the voters, including two that ironically would have made it more difficult for voters to change laws at the ballot box. 

Shope said he believes at least some of those rejections were caused by a lack of funds to get information out about the measures and complicated and confusing descriptions of the proposals. 

Neither Smith nor Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan, of Tucson, are convinced that Republicans will show restraint in 2025 when it comes to proposing legislation they know has zero chance of being signed by the governor. 

“Their Freedom Caucus has been re-empowered at the center of their leadership,” Sundareshan told the Mirror. “I do anticipate that they will be pushing some pretty extreme policies to the governor that will need to be met with a veto stamp.”

The far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus was created in 2022 and has pushed legislative Republicans to the right since then. 

When it comes to working with the federal government on immigration reform, Republicans will have to contend with Democratic leaders like Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, Attorney General Kris Mayes and Hobbs, who have all said they will refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation plans, or even fight them in court. 

Hobbs told reporters during a Monday press conference at the border in Nogales that she was willing to work with the Trump administration to stop the flow of fentanyl from Mexico into Arizona, but not on the mass deportations that he’s called for that would break up mixed-status families. 

In a statement following the Democrats’ failure to flip control of the legislature, an effort that Hobbs put more than $500,000 into, the governor called for both sides to seek common ground. She highlighted her previous efforts working across the aisle to repeal the state’s near-total abortion ban dating back to 1864 and on legislation aimed at bringing down housing costs. 

“I remain ready and willing to work with anyone who is serious about taking on our state’s challenges and delivering for Arizonans,” Hobbs said. 

But the loss of some more moderate Republican legislators, as well as the likelihood of increased influence from the Freedom Caucus, could make bipartisanship even more difficult than it was in the first two years of Hobbs’ governorship. 

“Katie Hobbs, Kris Mayes, Adrian Fontes, and Democrats from coast to coast were overwhelmingly repudiated by the American people this past election,” Arizona Freedom Caucus Chairman Jake Hoffman told the Mirror in a statement via text message. “Voters made it clear that they want a better economy, safer communities, a secure border, and lower prices. The Freedom Caucus is focused on delivering on these priorities for the people of Arizona, while simultaneously defending against the Democrat attacks on their liberty, just as we have for the last four years.”

Since its inception, the Arizona Freedom Caucus has proposed numerous election reform bills based on conspiracy theories and controversial legislation like a bill that would have allowed the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms. 

But all of the caucus’s most extreme proposals either failed to garner enough backing from other Republicans or were met with a veto from Hobbs. Smith said he expects that the motivation for GOP legislators to send bills to Hobbs that they know she’ll never sign will be their goal of taking back the Governor’s Office in 2026. 

Those bills are likely to focus on culture war issues like banning explicit books in schools, barring transgender students from using shower and bathroom facilities that align with their identities, the use of students’ preferred pronouns in schools and gender-confirming surgeries. 

“I anticipate you’re going to see the Republicans teeing up their culture items to position a Republican agenda versus the executive as it relates to positioning for the 2026 gubernatorial sequel,” Smith said. 

Hobbs, a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ community, has not been shy about vetoing anti-drag and anti-trans legislation, and has promised to continue doing so. 

For Sundareshan, working to support vulnerable communities will be a top priority going forward. She was first elected to the Senate in 2022 and was one of the most vocal Democratic legislators over the following two years. 

“We will be using our voices and our numbers to the best of our abilities, and doing so to protect our constituents from what we expect is going to be a lot of attacks,” she said. 

In the days following a disappointing Nov. 5 election, Democrats were still licking their wounds and then were hit with the tragic news that Democratic Senate candidate and active member of the Tucson community John McLean had been killed when a drunk driver ran a stop sign and crashed into his vehicle. 

But now, the minority party is back to making plans for the upcoming legislative session. 

“We’re not giving up, because there is work that needs to be done,” Oscar De Los Santos, the Democrats’ new House minority leader, told the Mirror. 

Top priorities for Democrats in the upcoming session will include maintaining or increasing school funding, bringing down housing costs and shoring up the state’s water future, he said. 

Leaders from both parties agree that the legislature should put a focus on water legislation in the upcoming session, with hopes of bipartisanship on an issue important to all Arizonans, regardless of party affiliation. 

Shope said he was hopeful that Republicans and Democrats could agree that the state’s election laws should be amended to ensure more timely reporting of results, an issue that has caused false allegations of election fraud, and frustration for many voters over the past several years as races in Arizona are decided by tighter margins. 

“My goodness, it seems to be the one thing that, bipartisan-wise, everybody agrees on,” Shope said. “We need to get this stuff done a little bit quicker.” 

But Sundareshan said she expects any bills that might suppress voter turnout will be vetoed. The dropping off of early ballots on Election Day, the primary driver of the many days it takes to tabulate votes, continues to be a popular practice for Arizona voters, with more than 300,000 “late earlies” dropped off in Maricopa and Pima counties on Election Day this year. 

“Historically, Arizonans have supported the ability to drop off early ballots on election day,” Smith said. “But I’ve got to believe the sentiment to do that has changed given the last couple of cycles.” 

Petersen already has a plan to propose changes to Arizona’s voting laws to mirror those in Florida, which counts its ballots rapidly, in part because the last day to drop off an early ballot at a polling place is the Friday prior to Election Day, allowing more time for ballot processing. 

“Every bill has to get past Hobbs, and I think she’s made clear that she’s on the side of common sense,” De Los Santos said, adding that the best way to ensure that Hobbs signs a bill is to work with Democrats on it. 

De Los Santos, Sundareshan and Smith all agreed that an important issue this year will be the continuation of Proposition 123, which provides about $300 million annually to K-12 schools from the state’s land trust and is set to expire in 2025. 

Republicans and Democrats have disagreed on how to make that work, and because the voters will ultimately have the final say, Republicans could bypass Democrats and send a continuation measure directly to the ballot. But their hopes to do so in 2024 stalled after House and Senate Republicans couldn’t agree on how to structure such a proposal.

State agency director nominations

Hobbs will again face the challenge this year of getting her nominees for directors of state agencies approved, after she lost a lawsuit from Republican legislative leaders for circumventing the director nomination process. 

After Hobbs struggled to get many of her director nominees through a newly created Republican-led Senate approval committee last year, she went around the chamber and instead appointed deputy directors that essentially served as directors. Agency directors are subject to Senate approval, but deputy directors are not. 

After losing the lawsuit, Hobbs agreed to nominate new directors, who will have to be approved by the Senate. 

Hoffman, who leads the Freedom Caucus, will continue to chair the committee as he’s done for the past two years, and that means Hobbs’ directors will face a tough approval process. 

“When her illegal ploy didn’t work, she spent millions of dollars trying to flip control of the Legislature to get her radical nominees approved by Democrats and failed miserably,” Hoffman said in a written statement. “The committee invites Katie Hobbs to come to the table with sane, nonpartisan, qualified nominees, and we will approve them. What we won’t do is rubberstamp unqualified radicals.”

In response to the lawsuit, attorneys for Hobbs accused the Senate committee of engaging in “bad faith conduct” that blocked her ability to fulfill her statutory duties. They also pointed out that the committee grilled the nominees about hot-button issues like transgender athletes, white nationalism and border security, which had little to do with the jobs for which they were nominated.