Congressmen Andy Biggs and David Schweikert both insisted they are electable candidates who can appeal to independents in a GOP gubernatorial debate on Wednesday.
Biggs and Schweikert both pitched themselves as non-extremists who can work across the aisle.
“In every poll that’s been released, I am the most competitive Republican in the entire state with Katie Hobbs,” Biggs said. He noted multiple times that Gov. Hobbs is under investigation for an alleged pay-to-play scheme.
He is running with President Donald Trump’s endorsement, but only mentioned him once — instead focusing on his work with Democrats like Mark Kelly and Hakeem Jeffries in Washington.
“I know how to reach across the aisle and when people find that out, they find that rewarding and refreshing. … I work so well with the opposition that just a week or two ago, I passed another bill unanimously out of the House with my original cosponsor was the Democrat from Virginia,” Biggs said, referring to H.R. 8466, to prevent fraud with emergency funding.
Schweikert appealed to Republican voters, noting that Turning Point-supported candidates, like Biggs, weren’t successful in statewide elections last cycle.
“My friend at the end, I know this is tough with us running against each other, but when you're wholly owned by Turning Point and you've lost election, and lost election, and lost election, it puts everything in our future at risk," Schweikert said.
He noted that he has experience winning competitive races as the longtime representative of Congressional District 1, which is one of the most competitive parts of the state.
Candidates Scott Neely and Ken Miceli pitched themselves as political outsiders.
Neely said he has the most boots on the ground experience dealing with Arizona issues. He called himself an Arizona first and America first candidate.
“We're going to have a new sheriff in town, his name is Scott Neely,” Neely said.
Neely echoed Schweikert's claim that as a Turning Point candidate, Biggs can’t beat Hobbs.
Biggs said he wouldn’t call Turning Point his “bedfellows per se,” but said he’s grateful for their support.
Miceli said he’s the candidate who can make Arizona more affordable.
He went after Schweikert for being found guilty of 11 ethics violations in the House of Representatives.
Biggs vague on voucher expansion plan
Biggs said he wants to expand Arizona’s universal school voucher program, but he didn’t give concrete details of a plan.
All K-12 students have access to vouchers, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. They can be spent on private schools or home schools.
“What I will tell you about the voucher expansion that I would support is, is how you use it, which makes it more accessible for multiple schools. So right now, it's like one-on-one, and there's a way to get at that and skin it so you're moving it in multiple—multiple institutions,” Biggs told reporters.
Biggs said Rep. Leo Biasiucci (R-Lake Havasu City) has a “concept” for ESA expansion.
“I'm not going to tell you what it is until he actually drafts his bill. I'll let him tell you what it is,” Biggs said.
Biggs also said Arizona should “encourage the use of ESAs in trade schools,” which fellow GOP candidate Scott Neely suggested.
Neely advocated for cutting funding to public universities to pay for his plan.
“What we're going to do is take it away from the college systems. We're going to cut college funding and we're going to expand trade schools,” Neely said.
Currently, ESAs aren’t available for higher education unless students choose to use unspent voucher money on college.
Data centers and water
All the candidates said data centers should manage their water and energy use in Arizona.
Schweikert and Biggs both said the state isn’t dealing with a water shortage so much as a water management issue, and both advocated for using desalination to augment the state’s water supply.
Neely said every data center should have to pay for its own desalination plant.
“I don't want my water — my underground water recharge systems all polluted with these data centers. … So, if they don't want to come to Arizona, don't come to Arizona,” Neely said.
Biggs credited Republican state legislators with putting a moratorium on data center tax breaks in this year’s budget, which is actually something Hobbs pushed for - although the governor advocated for eliminating the tax breaks altogether.
Tax cuts and business
Biggs reiterated his idea of gradually eliminating the state income tax and said Arizona won’t have to raise other taxes or cut services as a result. Instead, he said the state can make up some of that revenue by eliminating fraud in programs like Medicaid.
“Eliminating fraud will not take care of all of the income tax at once. We can eliminate fraud. Some of that, I hope, and by eliminating that waste will actually reduce the cost of state government, which will allow us to reduce some of the taxation,” Biggs said.
He argued eliminating income tax will make Arizona more competitive in the business world.
Schweikert, who calls himself a fiscal hawk, criticized Biggs’ income tax elimination idea, arguing that the state would have to raise property taxes to pay for it.
“It's not based in the math and the reality. And that's how you end up getting people elected who promise lots of things and then turn to you and break people's hearts because reality sets in,” he said.
Schweikert said he wants to use more AI in the state to streamline homebuilding, and court more businesses to come to Arizona.
“The formula is real simple: get off your ass, get in the airplane, and you walk—traveling up and down California and anyone that will talk to you. You are a salesman, you're a marketer, you're an evangelical, you know, bringing in anyone who will bring good quality paying jobs into the state,” Schweikert said.
He argued bringing in more business will result in higher wages for Arizonans.
Schweikert said by better managing state trust land and getting more of it on the market, Arizona can achieve wage growth.
Neely advocated for eliminating property taxes for seniors and Miceli called for waiving the property tax entirely over the course of two years and paying for it by courting big companies who will bring jobs.
Elections
Biggs said he’d sign a bill that Hobbs rejected to make Arizona’s elections “Florida-style.”
That means requiring early ballots to be submitted by the Friday before election day, and requiring active early voters to confirm their address and status every cycle.
Altering the election timeline would speed up the process of getting results, but Democrats argued it would limit voters’ options and access.
Schweikert didn’t commit to supporting the Florida-style elections idea.
“There's actually a series of trigger dates, and that's one of the things that actually makes the counting of those ballots so much faster. So, is Arizona ready to accept that? I can show you from some of my polling, even the most ultra-MAGA like the early - the vote-through-mail system,” Schweikert said.
Schweikert said the state should update its signature verification system because signatures can change over time.
Neely advocated for having everyone vote in person only on election day and getting rid of the current drop box system. He said he supports mail in ballots only for certain groups, like people with disabilities.
Miceli claimed that “dead people” are voting in Arizona, according to AI.
“Have you heard of something called AI?” he asked. That's where that information came from, AI,” Miceli said.
He called for increasing election security by scanning people for biometric data, which would be kept in a secure state database. He said he’s not sure how that would work for people who vote by mail.
Immigration and border security
Neely said he supports deporting criminals but not immigrants we need “in the trades.” He said he wants to protect DACA recipients.
“Maybe we need to do a state program to keep them here and, and, and shield them from the federal government. If that's what we need to do, I'm willing to do that. Put a, put a bill on my desk, I'll sign it,” Neely said.
-
Find everything you need to know about elections in Arizona and Maricopa County from KJZZ's politics team. -
A proposal sent to the November ballot by Republican lawmakers to undercut Arizona’s teachers unions has drawn the ire of police and firefighters across the state, who believe the measure would also harm their labor organizations. -
Voters will get the chance to add guardrails to the state’s universal private school voucher program in November — probably. -
The U.S. Department of Justice is sending “elections monitors” to Arizona and five other states. -
The Arizona Supreme Court sided with Republican County Recorder Justin Heap this week, dealing a blow to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which now must give Heap the resources he says his office needs to conduct upcoming elections.
