Former Republican John Giles leans in to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' platform

When Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs picked former Republican John Giles as her running mate last week, her campaign pitched the move as an olive branch to Arizona voters from across the political spectrum.

“We come from different political parties, but we share the belief that leadership is about bringing people together, delivering results, and doing what's right for Arizona, not playing partisan political games,” Hobbs said at a campaign kickoff event in Mesa on Saturday.

But beyond their voter registration, Hobbs and Giles appear in lock-step on most major issues.

In fact, Giles, who is now a registered independent, couldn’t name a single issue where he disagreed with the governor.

“Well, like I said, remarkably little or nothing, because we're focused on these nonpartisan agenda items, transportation, education,” said Giles, a former Mesa mayor. “There's not a partisan approach to these very important challenges that Arizona's facing.”

The issues

But the governor’s office is often faced with more partisan issues, such as abortion rights and Arizona’s school voucher system.

On those, Giles and Hobbs said they are on the same page.

The voucher program, officially known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, has been one of the most divisive topics at the Capitol since the Republican-led Legislature expanded eligibility to all students in the state.

Since taking office in 2022, Hobbs and legislative Democrats have tried and failed to shrink or add guardrails to the program, which has seen enrollment skyrocket to more than 100,000 students at a cost of more than $1 billion annually amidst reporting on misspending on non-education items.

Giles said he agreed with Hobbs that guardrails need to be added to the program and that the state should direct more resources to the public school system.

“School choice — that toothpaste is out of the tube,” Giles said. “We're going to continue to support school choice, but for it to be a meaningful school choice, that means public education has to have the resources that it needs to compete.”

On abortion, Hobbs said support for reproductive freedom was “100% a non-negotiable for me” when picking a running mate.

“And I know with the passage of (Proposition) 139, it is a non-negotiable for Arizonans,” Hobbs said, referencing the voter-approved ballot measure that added abortion protections to the state Constitution.

Giles has described himself as “pro life” in the past, but said he voted for Prop. 139, which passed in 2024 with 62% of the vote.

“It accurately reflects my personal point of view on the topic,” Giles said. “More importantly, it reflects the will of the Arizona voters, and it reflects the current state of the Constitution of Arizona, so, if I'm ever in a position to defend 139 and the new state constitution protections for that, I will do so.”

Hobbs and Giles are also in agreement that Republicans have gone too far in their attempts to regulate which bathrooms and public facilities transgender people can use, including a ballot measure that would ban trans students from using bathrooms, showers and locker rooms in schools with sports programs or athletic facilities.

Hobbs called that type of legislation “something politicians are using to bully kids.”

And Giles, who helped pass a non-discrimination ordinance in Mesa, did not disagree.

“I don't believe in discrimination, and so that issue is really a red herring more often than not,” he said. “But the Mesa ordinance has been in place for several years now. There's never actually been a situation like that that has been brought forward.”

Party politics

Appealing to voters across the political spectrum is critical for Democratic candidates running for statewide office in Arizona, a state where independent voters make up more than one third of the electorate and Republicans make up the single largest voting bloc.

Congressman Andy Biggs, the GOP nominee for governor, argued Giles wouldn’t appeal to Republican-leaning voters.

He pointed to Giles’ shared positions with Hobbs and the fact that Giles has endorsed Democrats like her, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as far back as 2020.

“Democrat Katie Hobbs' selection of DNC Convention speaker and Democrat primary voter John Giles is of no surprise to Arizonans who have been paying attention,” Biggs said in a statement.

But Giles, who was a registered Republican for four decades, argued there are plenty of current and former GOP voters disaffected with the state of their party.

“So I felt like I needed to be there to advocate for people like myself that were being shoved out of the party a few months ago. I realized that's a lost cause right now,” he said of the decision to re-register as an independent this year.

But he said he doesn’t view Republican voters themselves as a lost cause.

“It means we share a lot of priorities; that I identify with them,” Giles said. “And I think many of them feel like I do that they are being left behind by their party. They're being forced out.”

At the campaign event, Giles argued the Republican tent “is getting smaller and smaller” as the party has become fixated on partisan hot button issues like President Donald Trump’s false claims that his loss in 2020 was the result of voter fraud.

“When it came time to defend our democracy, Andy Biggs voted to put your votes in the toilet,” he told supporters, referring to Biggs’ vote against certifying Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results.

Hobbs and Giles contrasted those positions with the “non-partisan issues” they want to tackle, such as water, education and economic development.

“There shouldn't be a Republican and a Democratic solution to that. I mean, it's a shared solution,” Giles said.

If Arizona voters want to see that contrast for themselves, they will have to head out to campaign events as Hobbs and Giles have declined to debate Biggs and his lieutenant governor pick, former state Sen. Sine Kerr.

The Hobbs campaign said its time is better spent meeting with voters across the state.

“I'm going to spend my time out talking to Arizonans, and I have had more than 100 open press events just this year. That's not going away,” Hobbs said.

But Hobbs wouldn’t say why she couldn’t meet with those Arizonans and participate in a one-hour debate hosted by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission that is scheduled for Oct. 6.

As for the millions of registered voters in Arizona who likely won’t make it out to a campaign event, “there are not a million people tuning into debates,” Hobbs said.

Biggs has agreed to participate in the debate alongside Green Party candidate Risa Lombardo and No Labels candidate Teri Hourihan.