The Arizona Attorney General’s office had spent three months asking Governor Katie Hobbs to sit down for questioning in a criminal investigation—and three months getting excuses instead of answers. So when local reporters caught up with Attorney General Kris Mayes, they didn’t let her off easy. “Why have you let the governor essentially blow you off on this? ” one reporter asked.
“Can anybody blow off the Attorney General of Arizona if they want to talk to them? ”
“The answer is no. You cannot blow off the Attorney General’s Office. Full stop.
No one can, regardless of who they are,” Mayes replied. But when pressed about the governor specifically, Mayes pushed back. “I would disagree with that characterization,” she said. The timeline told a different story.
Mayes had asked Hobbs to sit for questioning months earlier. Both sides kept making excuses for why it hadn’t happened. Still, Mayes refused to discuss the details of the investigation or say when it would wrap up. “When we have a result in this investigation, we will make an announcement,” she said.
But would that be before the election—just 92 days away? She wouldn’t say. Would the governor ever actually sit down with her or her prosecutors? She wouldn’t say that either.
“Is there a chance this gets wrapped up and the governor doesn’t sit for questioning? ” a reporter pressed. “I’m going to decline to answer that question right now,” Mayes said. The reporters weren’t satisfied.
They pushed further, wondering if someone else from Hobbs’ office could provide the information without the governor physically sitting down. They got no comment. The investigation centered on Hobbs and one of her top contributors. The accusation was simple: the governor’s donor made a six-figure contribution and then got a lucrative state contract.
It was an issue Andy Biggs, the Republican nominee for governor, had made central to his campaign, slamming her in ads for being under criminal investigation. But Hobbs wasn’t the only one being scrutinized. GOP lawmakers hired an independent investigator. The auditor general was looking into it.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s office was investigating too. And none of these investigations had produced a conclusion. Hobbs had maintained from the beginning that she followed all the laws and did nothing wrong. “I’m a social worker, and I’m a contractor with DCS.
My career has always been about helping vulnerable children and vulnerable families,” Hobbs said. “I am doing right by Arizonans, and this is just a distraction. ”
Reporters also asked about a meal she and her campaign manager attended with the donor and his spouse. “Why would you do that with your campaign manager?
It seems like an odd thing to do with a government contractor,” a reporter asked. Hobbs said she never talked to him about his government contract. “He is a political supporter, and I often have socialized with supporters,” she said. When asked if she felt the need to put the investigation to rest before the election, Hobbs deflected.
“That’s not up to me. I want the investigations to play out, and I’m looking forward to them finding exactly what I’ve been saying—that nothing wrong happened,” she said. Meanwhile, the political dynamics were getting complicated. Mayes and Hobbs are both Democrats, and both are up for re-election.
Some wondered if Mayes was trying to protect a fellow Democrat. Mayes’ opponents were already circling, and the question of whether she was sitting on the investigation for political reasons was starting to hang over everything. Hobbs, for her part, seemed determined to avoid any uncomfortable confrontations. She made it official that she would not debate her Republican challenger Andy Biggs.
It was a repeat of the 2022 election, when she refused to face Kari Lake. Her campaign said Hobbs would rather spend time meeting face-to-face with voters than take part in what she called “political theater” designed to produce short sound bites. Her campaign manager called Biggs a “Washington insider who refuses to answer for his record of rising costs and siding with a corrupt cult. ”
It had been eight years since Hobbs last faced an opponent on the debate stage, back when she was running for Secretary of State.
Biggs’ campaign fired back, saying Hobbs won’t debate because she thinks the rules don’t apply to her. “That may be why she’s also under criminal investigation for corruption,” his campaign said. But Hobbs’ team was also digging into Biggs’ past. They pointed to a law he apparently opposed that reflected negatively on him.
It went all the way back to when Biggs was the Arizona Senate President, involving a polygamist sect of the LDS Church in Colorado City. Fellow Republicans had accused Biggs of killing a bill that would have cracked down on what was going on there. The back-and-forth was fierce. And even though the debate had been squashed, the political fighting was only getting louder.
Three open investigations, no conclusions. A governor who wouldn’t sit for questioning, wouldn’t debate, and insisted she had nothing to hide. An attorney general who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say when any of it would end.
And in just 92 days, the voters would decide if any of it mattered.
