Arizona Democrat Katie Hobbs Won’t Recuse Herself from Overseeing Governor’s Race

Arizona Democratic candidate for Governor Katie Hobbs speaks to the media before dropping
Ross D. Franklin/AP

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor, refuses to recuse herself from overseeing Arizona’s gubernatorial election.

Hobbs, who is tasked with supervising elections in her capacity as the secretary of state, is on the ballot as a candidate in the governor’s race. Despite calls from her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, to recuse herself from overseeing the gubernatorial election, Hobbs declared that she would not step aside, as the Wall Streets Journal’s Eliza Collins reported Sunday.

The Wall Street Journal asked Hobbs what she would tell voters in the scenario where she wins the governorship but some constituents question the legitimacy of the outcome.

“These are folks who are pretending that there is evidence that doesn’t exist and they’re going to continue to be misled by these leaders, but I know that I did my job and I followed the law,” Hobbs replied. 

Lake has repeatedly called for Hobbs to take a step back from supervising the election. A spokesperson for her campaign recently slammed Hobbs’s performance as secretary of state in a statement to Breitbart News after up to 6,000 faulty ballots only listing federal races were sent out last month, and the Arizona Supreme Court called out Hobbs in a ballot initiative ruling over the Summer.

“Katie Hobbs’ incompetence in running Arizona’s elections is so obvious that even the Arizona Supreme Court had to take the unprecedented move to call her out for her errors,” the spokesperson said. “Given that Hobbs hasn’t even shown up to work for months, and that just last week thousands of voters were mailed faulty ballots, why should any Arizonan trust her to successfully administer this election?”

“This is why Kari Lake continues to call for Hobbs to recuse herself from overseeing the 2022 elections – no Secretary of State should be in charge of the same election that he or she is running in,” the spokesperson added.

Lake has led in the vast majority of recent polls and holds a 2.6 percent advantage over Hobbs in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average.

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