KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about a new entrant into the GOP primary for state schools superintendent, a new poll in next year’s governor’s race and more, The Show sat down with former state lawmaker Regina Cobb and Sam Richard of Consilium Consulting.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Regina, let me start with you. With State Treasurer Kimberly, getting into the GOP primary for superintendent of public Instruction. Of course, the incumbent, Tom Horne, also a Republican. I’m curious, first off, just what do you make of the fact that the Freedom Caucus — sort of the right-wing group in the GOP led by state Sen. Jake Hoffman — is putting up another candidate in a statewide race?
REGINA COBB: Well, I think it’s going to be an interesting race. And why are we allowing somebody like Turning Point to dictate who’s going up or who is not going up? Kimberly Yee has done a really decent job as treasurer. I know she’s termed out, so this is probably a natural progression for her.
So I don’t necessarily feel that it’s going to be a Turning Point put-up. But I think it’s going to make our race interesting with Horne. I consider him a conservative, and then I don’t know how much more you can be conservative and and move to the right. So, I think that’s what Turning Point’s looking at.
BRODIE: It looks like ESAs — the empowerment scholarship accounts, basically school vouchers — are sort of at the forefront of this. We’ve heard, Jake Hoffman say that Tom Horne is the single biggest threat to the universal ESA program, basically because Horn Horn’s office is saying some purchases by families that get ESAs weren’t appropriate.
How do you see that issue — It’s certainly one that a lot of people care about in Arizona — how do you see that issue sort of shaping this primary?
COBB: I think that’s going to be the biggest part of this primary. I personally was always a proponent of ESAs, but I wasn’t a proponent of not having accountability for what they’ve bought. And so I would hope that, I think that that’s what we’re trying to look at is the accountability piece. And I think there needs to be accountability for what is purchased.
There are some things that are educational: books, those kind of things. A baby grand piano is not educational. It could be, but it’s probably not needed to be able to give that education to a piano student. So I think there’s things that we need to look at.
BRODIE: So Sam, from the Democratic side, are you popping the popcorn?
SAM RICHARD: Absolutely. The microwave is ready to go, and we are watching. There’s a kind of a political science thought of the Overton window. And I feel like we’re now at the Overton skylight. It’s completely moving in all sorts of different directions.
I mean, I don’t think that anyone has ever considered Tom Horne to be even close to moderate. He’s historically been a very conservative person. To try to outflank to his right is a very bold move. And we’ll see how that works out for him, Cotton.
BRODIE: Thank you for the “Dodgeball” reference.
RICHARD: You got it. But I think the other thing that’s interesting to me is, to back up what Regina was saying here, is that ESAs really are going to be a flashpoint in this race. This office itself is highly administrative. This is not a political office. This is really someone who kind of funnels federal dollars and federal policy and administers that in our 250 plus or minus school districts and now has administrative functions over the ESA program.
So to make it a very political, race is going to have very interesting outputs on kind of where the conversation is headed.
BRODIE: Are you expecting to see a high profile, sort of a big-name Democrat jump into this race? Because we’ve seen some names, and they’re not, I think, names that a lot of folks would necessarily know in the political world.
RICHARD: I would say yes, with a caveat. There are a handful of names that I think are high profile in education circles, in education community. But it’s not going to be a high profile, politically astute individual or something like that.
Because, again, this isn’t a highly political job. This is not the governor’s office. This is not the attorney general. You have a bully pulpit to talk about education policy. But again, this is mostly a finance and administrative function. So to make it political is really a fundamental misunderstanding of what the office function is.
BRODIE: Regina, I want to ask you about Kimberly Yee specifically because the conventional wisdom three years ago when she was reelected as treasurer, was that one of, if not the biggest reasons she won was because she was talking about issues that voters cared about. She was not seen as sort of a MAGA candidate. Top-of-the-ticket Republican candidates who were more MAGA candidates lost — in some cases fairly handily, in some cases obviously by very slim margins.
But she was able to win because she was seen as more of a mainstream establishment Republican. And now she’s running basically as a Freedom Caucus candidate.
COBB: Absolutely. And it kind of changes the dynamics of where Kimberly is at. And I don’t know if it’s a positive thing. I think she was sitting in a good spot when she was in as treasurer, and she was a logical person. I know she was pushing for a Trump endorsement when she was running for office.
BRODIE: But she ran for governor three years ago, right?
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COBB: Yes. And she wasn’t making any headway. And I think that that’s one of the reasons she’s not running this year. And so this is kind of a good spot for her. I think she can fall into this. And this would be a good position for her. But to just run to the right and like you said, be a MAGA candidate — I think that’s almost a mistake for her.
BRODIE: I’m curious, Sam, having a Democrat wade into Republican internal politics. It is kind of an interesting switch — if switch is the right word for it — for somebody like Treasurer Yee, who was seen as a sort of a mainstream Republican candidate, now running with the Freedom Caucus.
RICHARD: Right. And it’s not completely outside of her political trajectory. She is a former chair of the Senate Education Committee. But even then, if you kind of strip away any kind of issue, set passion or anything like that, you have someone who really outperformed other statewide Republican candidates in the last election cycle. I think that the state treasurer’s race was one of the very few that was called within the first hour or two of results.
BRODIE: Yeah, she won pretty handily.
RICHARD: Very handily. But I think if you look at the next election cycle and kind of what its machinations might look like, even if Kimberly loses the primary, she’s still eligible to be someone’s lieutenant governor. This is the first election cycle where we’ll have an election for that office, which isn’t named during the primary. It’s a post-primary nomination process.
And furthermore, she retains that statewide name identification for perhaps a future race when the gubernatorial office is more of an open race for someone like Sen. Yee.
BRODIE: That’s interesting. Sam, let me stick with you and ask: You mentioned the governor’s race. We had a couple polls this week looking at the governor’s race. Of course, poll, snapshot in time. We’re a long way out — a million years away politically.
There’s a survey from Noble Predictive Insights which found Karrin Taylor Robson, leading the primary by just a little bit over Andy Biggs. Charlie Kirk was in this poll as well, although he’s not running. He has endorsed Andy Biggs.
And then in the general election, the incumbent governor, Katie Hobbs, led both Karrin Taylor Robson and Andy Biggs by about two points, with a pretty big number of undecided: 17% undecided against both Taylor Robson and Biggs. Takeaways from those numbers?
RICHARD: Yeah I don’t foresee — and I’m not you know a political crystal ball you know expert or anything, but I play one on the radio every now and again. I think when you have such a significant number of undecideds, looking at the news cycles that have happened in the first few months of the Trump administration and what’s going to happen over the next year or so, I really doubt that that that undecided is going to break predominantly for the president’s party.
So I think that we’re at a point where we are approaching the high-water mark for the Republican nominee, whoever it may be. And I think that if it is Congressman Biggs, you’re seeing his high-water mark. Because the people who are going to come out to vote tend to make it a referendum on the president and the president’s party.
So I think that the significant number of undecideds are trying to see, like, is Gov. Hobbs going to give me enough reason to show up to the polls for her? And I believe that she has done plenty to make that case. And she still has another legislative session. And, frankly, one to wrap up here.
BRODIE: Regina, do you agree with that? Obviously 17%, that number will come down as we get closer to the election, one would assume. But let’s say that these numbers are within the range as we get closer. Do you agree that some majority of those undecideds break toward the incumbent?
COBB: I don’t. I don’t. This is one of the things that Sam and I disagree on. I don’t think we hit a high-water mark like what Sam said. I think undecideds are undecided. And I think the reason the undecideds are there is because I don’t feel that Gov. Hobbs has done as good of a job as she could do.
She’s got one more year. You’re right. And we’ll see what she does in this next year and what happens during this budget cycle. That’s going to make a lot of difference, too. She’s been pretty much non-existent in the last two budget cycles. And so hopefully, we’ll see what she does this next cycle and where she goes to.
What was really interesting about those two polls is how different they were.
BRODIE: Yeah, there was another poll that showed Congressman Biggs with a really sizable lead over Karrin Taylor Robson in the GOP primary.
COBB: Yeah. And that was huge. And then to have this one not, the Noble poll come out. And I gotta say he’s pretty well known, and he’s respected as far as a pollster goes. I don’t put a lot into polls, especially this early in.
BRODIE: As somebody who has run in elections and probably polled herself, right?
COBB: Absolutely. I was down every time. I was down every time. Yes. And so I just kind of push them to the side and say, “Just keep running as if you’re running last.”
