Pragmatism or weakness? Hobbs opts for a centrist strategy over direct Trump confrontation

Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes gave a fiery speech during the No Kings rally on Oct. 18 in Phoenix, where she promised to “fight like hell” against the Trump administration, while Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs was nowhere to be found — not only was she absent from the stage, she didn’t attend the protest and was silent about it on social media. 

While other Democratic governors like JB Pritzker of Illinois marched alongside protesters in Chicago, or at least posted messages on social media supporting them, Hobbs has taken a less aggressive approach to criticizing Trump and has moved her campaign toward the center, in hopes of wooing the independent and moderate Republican voters she needs to win in 2026. 

Rather than take on Trump directly, she’s focusing on the local economy and reminders of her work across party lines. That non-confrontational approach is one that some seasoned political advisors warn against. 

Hobbs, a former social worker and Arizona Secretary of State, knows she has a difficult election ahead in a state where Republicans have a seven-point voter registration advantage and where President Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024.

“Katie Hobbs is never going to stop working across the aisle to get things done for Arizonans. That’s what she campaigned on, that’s how she’s governed, and that’s what she will continue to do,” campaign communications director Michael Beyer told the Arizona Mirror. “And after more than 725 bipartisan bills signed into law, Katie has proven she’ll always put Arizona first and will work with anyone to deliver real results.”

Hobbs has also vetoed 390 bills, the vast majority of which had only Republican support in a state legislature with a deep partisan divide.

The first-term governor’s reelection campaign, which officially kicked off less than a month ago, aligns in many ways with recommendations from an Oct. 27 report co-authored by Simon Bazelon for the centrist Democratic group Welcome. The report, called “Deciding to Win” is based on surveys of more than 500,000 people following the 2024 election, and urges Democratic candidates to focus relentlessly on the economy and to moderate their positions on immigration, public safety and energy to more closely align with the views of the general public. 

But Rachel Bitecofer, a national Democratic political analyst and strategist who provided feedback on drafts of the report and agrees with its message, told the Arizona Mirror that Hobbs is too meek in her criticisms of President Trump and Republicans. 

“It’s not just enough to start talking about economic issues,” Bitecofer said. “There has to be a hero and a villain in the story.”

In her “Arizona First” rallies, the first of which were held last weekend in Phoenix and Tucson, Hobbs touted her efforts to bring Republicans and Democrats in the legislature together to pass a balanced budget — and contrasted that with the “One Big Beautiful Big” passed by Trump and congressional Republicans in July, without Democratic support. 

The central plank of Hobbs campaign aims to separate her from divisive politics, with the Democrat operating outside the partisan fray that drives action in Washington, D.C., to focus on what Arizonans need. 

And that means her campaign won’t take aim directly at Trump, but instead emphasize the harms being done to Arizona by Republican policies — and highlight how the GOP candidates who hope to defeat her back those policies and will bow down to Trump. For instance, she is already comparing things like the massive cuts to Medicaid made in the Republican spending bill to her efforts to continue services to Arizonans with developmental disabilities. 

“By putting people first and politics last, Katie Hobbs proves every day that she’s keeping her promise to put Arizona first — lowering costs, securing the border, and creating good-paying jobs,” Beyer said. “Gov. Hobbs’ approach stands in stark contrast to her out-of-touch opponents, who are putting Arizona last by cheerleading job-killing tax hikes on small businesses and families, stripping away healthcare from over 365,000 Arizonans, and ripping away meals from children, seniors, and veterans.”

The border

Hobbs, who previously criticized President Joe Biden’s lack of action at the border, recently told the Phoenix radio station KTAR that she agreed that Trump had done a good job in stopping illegal crossings. 

Her campaign bragged in an email that she had garnered praise from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for her work with the Trump administration to ebb the flow of fentanyl across Arizona’s border with Mexico. 

Still, Hobbs has taken aim at Trump in some instances. She criticized the Trump administration for sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers after day laborers with no criminal records instead of the immigrants with criminal convictions that he had promised to deport. 

“I would continue to advocate for the president to keep his promise and go after the people that are making us unsafe,” Hobbs told the Associated Press. 

She has characterized the Republican gubernatorial primary as a “race to the right” among U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, businesswoman and lobbyist Karrin Taylor Robson and U.S. Rep. David Schweikert. The governor has said the trio are desperate to appease the president. Biggs and Robson have both received endorsements from Trump. 

But in comparison to other Democrats, Hobbs’s statements have been tepid. She has been far more timid in her criticisms of Trump than Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, another first-term Democrat up for reelection next year. 

Mayes spoke against the Trump administration Oct. 18 No Kings rally in Phoenix, while Hobbs was absent from the event that drew around 15,000 people to the Capitol. 

During the rally, Mayes promised to continue “fighting like hell” against the Trump administration. 

Mayes is part of a coalition of Democratic attorneys general from other states who have filed 29 lawsuits aimed at stopping Trump’s executive overreach. Hobbs, meanwhile, opted not to join a group of Democratic governors who came together to oppose the president, mostly through legal action. 

“The last thing you want to look like right now is weak,” Bitecofer said, adding that it’s a “no-brainer” that Hobbs should have made an appearance at the No Kings rally. “The Republican Party wouldn’t need to be told twice to be at that rally, right?” 

Bitecofer doesn’t agree with the idea that speaking against the president will alienate moderate voters, especially in a state where there are still plenty of John McCain Republicans, even if they’re a quiet minority. 

“I don’t know who gave her the advice of not wanting to participate, but if she gets invited to (it), she should be making sure she’s the keynote of the third (No Kings) rally,” Bitecofer said. 

Bitecofer thinks that, across the Democratic Party, candidates must moderate their stance on immigration — but there’s also ample room to come after Trump for his lies about who his administration planned to target for deportations. 

“If the Hobbs campaign is smart, they’ll be able to flip onto offense on immigration and attack Trump for lying,” she said. “I mean, there’s people that voted for him that have had their own spouses deported now, right?” 

LGBTQ 

Hobbs has been a vocal supporter of the LGBTQ community for years and has vetoed numerous pieces of anti-transgender legislation passed by the Republicans who control the state legislature. But after speaking at the Phoenix Pride Festival in 2023 and serving as the grandmarshal of the Phoenix Pride Parade in 2024, she was noticeably absent from the festival last month. 

Hobbs spokesman Christian Slater told the Mirror she missed the parade because she was in Mexico for trade meetings that day. Hobbs was in Phoenix during the festival the day prior, posting a photo from a hike on Piestewa Peak. She did not acknowledge the Pride Festival at all.

It depends on the Republicans

Hobbs’s mild approach to criticizing her opponents and her moves toward a middle-of-the-road message are tactics that have won Democrats statewide elections in Arizona in the past. But those candidates, including Hobbs in 2022, were helped by the unpopularity of their extreme Republican opponents. 

In a state where Trump won two out of the last three presidential elections and Republicans have widened their lead in voter registrations, Republican political consultant Barrett Marson told the Mirror that Hobbs is being realistic in her campaign approach. 

“Gov. Hobbs is looking at realities,” he said. “She has to tack to center if she has a chance of winning. She can’t rely on Kari Lake coming in to save her.” 

While Marson acknowledged that there were some things in Biggs’s past that could “come back to haunt him,” the former leader of the House Freedom Caucus also has a conservative voting record in Congress to point to, while “Kari Lake was just crazy,” he said. 

In Marson’s view, Hobbs has no chance of winning a general election against Robson, who has historically been a more moderate Republican but has sought to remake herself as a MAGA warrior. (Robson spent about $19 million of her own money in 2022, but lost the Republican primary to Lake.) 

Marson noted the different tactics from Mayes and Hobbs, Democrats who both won close races for statewide offices in 2022 in a state that is historically red against extreme-right candidates. Mayes beat her Republican opponent, Abe Hamadeh, by only 280 votes in 2022. 

“Mayes is running her reelection as a leader in the resistance and Hobbs is taking a different tact, touting some of her successes rather than taking on President Trump,” Marson said. “A year from now, we’ll see which is successful.”

In the “Deciding to Win” report, the authors repeatedly mentioned U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego and his move toward the center on the border during the 2024 campaign, though it failed to note that a significant reason that Gallego outperformed expectations was the increasing unpopularity of Lake, his opponent. She continued to attempt to overturn the results of the gubernatorial election that she lost to Hobbs throughout the 2024 campaign for Senate, ultimately failing to prove her claims of election interference. 

While the authors of “Deciding to Win” advise Democrats to focus on the economy and to moderate their stances on the border, as Hobbs has done, they also urge candidates against caving or staying silent on the Trump administration. 

“We should vigorously oppose the Trump administration — but we should also be disciplined and strategic about how we do that,” they wrote. “We should focus our opposition to Trump on issues where voters are most on our side, like tariffs, Medicaid cuts, and tax cuts for the wealthy, rather than on issues where voters distrust us, like immigration.”