PHOENIX, Arizona — Governor Katie Hobbs and lieutenant governor-elect John Giles laid out their priorities for a second term on Monday, November 9, pointing to affordability, education funding and border policy as the issues voters most want addressed, and vowing to keep working across the aisle even as Hobbs pushes for reform of the state's school voucher program.

The setting matters. Hobbs was reelected on November 3, and Democrats have won a majority in the Arizona Legislature — the party has not held both chambers since 1966. Hobbs, who created the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee as a state lawmaker in 2014, took credit in her victory speech for helping flip the legislature, joking that when she arrived in 2011 there were so few Senate Democrats that “the caucus could share one pizza.” “We've now gone from a one-pizza caucus to a majority in both chambers,” she said.

Source: AZ Free News (victory speeches, Nov. 8)

Affordability first — and a fuel detail drivers will notice

Hobbs, who has made affordability a central focus of her first four years, acknowledged on Monday that voters are demanding more. “I've worked across the aisle to lower costs,” she said. “We've repealed the tax on rent. We've delivered historic tax cuts for Arizona families. But they're certainly telling us there's more to do.” In her victory speech she listed what she said voters named to her: “the grocery bill, the rent or the mortgage, the price at the pump, the cost of a prescription.”

Source: Focal News (Phoenix, Nov. 9)

One concrete cost lever she named on Monday is gasoline formulation. Hobbs said she has requested a federal waiver each year to allow the summer fuel blend of gasoline, which she said “raises costs a little bit,” and that the request has been granted every time. For Arizona's Punjabi truckers and other drivers who earn their living on Interstate 10, Interstate 17 and the Phoenix freight corridors, pump prices and fuel rules are not an abstraction — they are a weekly cost line, which is why a governor's waiver request lands as household news in the Valley as much as Capitol news.

The bipartisan ticket: a Republican-turned-independent as lieutenant governor

Giles, the former Republican mayor of Mesa, will serve in the newly created position of lieutenant governor. He is a registered independent. “The governor has actually chosen someone from outside of her party to be a part of this team and to bring a bipartisan approach to solving these problems and addressing the issues that the voters told us are so important,” he said on Monday, adding that his mayoral experience gives him a “passion” for affordability, transportation and education, and that details of his role will be announced in the coming weeks.

In his victory speech Giles made the same point in plainer language. “I'm the only non-Democrat who had a good night last night,” he said. “As mayor, I learned there's no Republican way or Democratic way to fill a pothole. The same is true at the State Capitol. There's no partisan approach that protects our water, builds homes families can afford, keeps rural hospitals open, or gets our kids ready for the good jobs coming to this state.” Hobbs said her top priorities, based on conversations with voters, are lowering costs, securing the border, protecting water and protecting public education.

Education: voucher reform and Proposition 123

On education, Hobbs predicted “a lot of momentum” on Monday for reforming the state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program — the school voucher system — which an auditor general's report earlier this year flagged for lack of oversight, wasteful spending and conflicts of interest. “We've seen so much waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and it's been reported on so many times,” she said, adding that Republicans in the Legislature have resisted reining it in. Reforms, she said, should protect “the original intent of the program, kids with disabilities, kids in struggling schools,” and ensure taxpayer dollars go to education. In the victory speeches, the same pledge was described as rolling back the school choice program, alongside more housing affordability by cutting bureaucratic requirements and expanded apprenticeship opportunities.

Hobbs also called on Monday for renewing Proposition 123, which boosted state land trust distributions to public schools for a decade before expiring in June. Renewal, she said, would “invest billions of dollars in our classrooms without raising taxes,” and the measure, she said, “fell victim to election-year politics.” Both the voucher reform and a Prop 123 renewal need the new Legislature, which is why the January session — not Monday's remarks — will decide whether either becomes law.

Border: interdiction numbers, and a different line on deportations

On border policy, Hobbs said the situation was “out of control” when she took office and that she “stood up to the Biden administration.” Her administration, she said, focused on getting resources to local law enforcement and deployed the National Guard for drug interdiction, with more than 19 million fentanyl pills intercepted. She described Operation Desert Guardian as a joint local, state and federal effort targeting cartel activity, drug trafficking and human smuggling.

Source: Focal News (Phoenix, Nov. 9)

Asked about President Donald Trump's recent comment that his deportation policy “might be too tough,” Hobbs said Arizona's approach avoided “the kind of really aggressive immigration enforcement tactics that the president was referring to.” Those tactics, she said, “don't make us safer” and create “mistrust and fear” that “put law enforcement and Arizonans in harm's way.” In her victory speech she put it this way: “We showed Washington we can secure the border and take on the cartels without deporting American citizens and indiscriminately rounding up people who pay taxes, work hard, and have been in their community for years.” For immigrant families in the Phoenix metro — including Punjabi families in trucking, small business and health care — that distinction between cartel-focused interdiction and broad workplace or neighbourhood enforcement is the practical question inside Monday's border remarks.

Water, vetoes and the limits of Monday's promises

Water ran through both sets of remarks. Hobbs pledged in her victory speech to fight the federal government for Arizona's water rights to the Colorado River, and on Monday she again listed protecting water among her top priorities — in a desert state where Colorado River allocations decide farm, city and development futures, that fight is a governing programme, not a slogan. Asked on Monday whether she expects to issue fewer vetoes with a Democratic legislature, she said, “I hope so,” while making clear her approach will not change: “I have always focused on working with Republicans and Democrats on the issues that I think are most important to Arizonans. And I will continue to be a backstop if there are things that are extreme and that don't move Arizona forward.” She also reminded voters she led the repeal of the state's 1864 total abortion ban.

What happens next, in short: Monday was the agenda-setting, not the lawmaking. The session ahead will show whether a governor who vetoed more than 540 measures in a divided government can convert a first trifecta since 1966 into statutes on classrooms, housing and water — and whether a bipartisan Hobbs-Giles ticket can hold together when the bills, rather than the speeches, are being counted.