By Connor Van Ligten
Katie Hobbs, the current Arizona Secretary of State, has announced she is running for the governor of Arizona for the 2022 election. Hobbs, a Democrat, is known in the LGBTQ+ community for hanging a Pride flag from the AZ Capitol building in 2019 as well as being a member of the Phoenix Pride board for many years. Hobbs’ official Instagram account acknowledges this year’s Pride month.
Outside of the LGBTQ+ community, she is known for her role in overseeing the 2020 election in Arizona, where her role in certifying the results and upholding the integrity of the election system lead to death threats and claims that she “rigged” the election in favor of current President Joe Biden.
Hobbs told the Arizona Capitol Times she is running for office “to rebuild our economy after Covid stronger than before. To make life saving investments in healthcare. To invest in our schools, our teachers, and the next generation of Arizona’s leaders to ensure that your race, gender, or zip code, do not dictate your destiny.”
Hobbs has also been a vocal critic of the GOP-lead audit of the Arizona 2020 election results, calling it a “whole joke,” and claiming that the result of the audit will have no meaning. At the end of May, she was stripped of her powers to defend from election lawsuits by the Arizona House Appropriations Committee.
Hobbs was elected to the Arizona House in 2010 and successfully ran for the Arizona Senate in 2012. She was a member of the senate until 2019, where she became the first Democrat in Arizona to hold the post of Secretary of State since 1995.
If elected, Hobbs would be the first Democrat to hold the post of Governor in Arizona since Janet Napolitano resigned in 2009.
Katie Hobbs announces her bid to run for Governor of Arizona here: