The four Republicans running for their party’s nomination for Arizona governor met Wednesday night in a debate sponsored by the Citizen’s Clean Elections Commission.
The winner of the July primary will face the incumbent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, in November’s general election — Hobbs does not have a primary challenger.
The candidates talked about tax policy, school vouchers and electability — among other issues — during the hourlong debate.
KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez from the Politics Desk was there, and she joined The Show to talk about what the candidates had to say.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Camryn.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: So let’s start off with, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, who are these people?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Who the heck are these people? Yeah, we’ve got four candidates, and I think there’s two with much more prominent name recognition. So those are our congressmen. We’ve got Andy Biggs, and we’ve got David Schweikert. They’ve both been in Congress for quite a while now.
And we’ve got two sort of political outsiders, somewhat, Scott Neely and Ken Miceli. And they sort of pitched themselves as more like your average guy, or "We’re not politicians, we’re the people." And especially Neely. He was like, “I’m a boots-on-the-ground guy, I’m one of the people.” And they’re running for this nomination to go up against Katie Hobbs. I think, Biggs and Schweikert are generally seen as the front-runners, and Andy Biggs is running with the Trump endorsement.
MARK BRODIE: Well, and a lot of the polls have shown, for whatever they’re worth, have shown that Andy Biggs has a lead in this race. But David Schweikert really talked quite a bit, it seems, about whether or not Biggs could win in November.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, the electability issue is Schweikert’s main thing, right? Because Schweikert has been representing this district in the north Valley for a long time, that’s Scottsdale area, north Phoenix — which is a very split district. It’s purple-ish, lots of independents, roughly half as many Democrats as Republicans, although slightly more Republicans.
And he’s been able to hold on to that year after year, challenge after challenge. And that was his main pitch. He was like, "Listen, I’ve been able to win competitive races, and if you guys select Biggs in the primary election, that’s going to bode ill for us in the general because we’re going to have a Kari Lake situation. People are going to feel that they have to go to Hobbs" — because essentially, he’s calling him too extreme.
MARK BRODIE: Well, and Biggs responded by basically saying he’s not Kari Lake, and also, it sounded like he was trying to put some distance between himself and Turning Point USA?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, there was an allegation that he is basically a puppet of Turning Point USA. And he said, we’re not, he said, "bedfellows." But he knows that he has their support, and he mentioned that too. He said he’s happy to have Turning Point’s support, and that’s very evident. He’s spoken at lots of their events. They had a Turning Point watch party for this debate that was specifically about him. It’s very clear to everyone that Turning Point is very much behind him, Turning Point Action.
MARK BRODIE: OK, so one of the other big issues that came up, Camryn, was ESAs, these school vouchers. A big issue at the state Legislature in the waning days, as you know well. What did the candidates have to say about ESAs last night?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: There’s a bit of a curveball there. So we have a universal school choice program here in Arizona for K-12, right? But Feely said —
MARK BRODIE: Neely.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Sorry. That’s right, Neely.
MARK BRODIE: Not — Jay Feely’s running in Schweikert’s old district.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Correct. Neely said he wants to expand the program even further, and he elaborated on that by saying he wants it to apply to trade schools. And he talked about defunding some other Arizona universities to help pay for that.
Biggs on the stage said he also wants to expand ESAs, but was less clear on the details of that when we asked him. He said he has a concept, he’s got a plan, but he wouldn’t expand on what the plan actually is. So it’s not clear what he means when he says he wants to expand the universal program.
MARK BRODIE: And expanding it to trade schools would be a pretty significant change in how the program is operated from how it’s been, right?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I mean, if we’re making it eligible to adults, if we’re making it eligible to more people, that would presumably increase the cost. Neely ... was talking about how we could use businesses and maybe incentivize them to help get engaged in this kind of program and how this would help our workforce issues as well because we would be putting more people into trades directly, and those would be jobs that would be protected from AI, stuff like that. He had more concrete details of the expansion idea.
MARK BRODIE: All right, so there’s also some discussion about tax policy and whether there are some particular taxes that we should keep or not keep, especially between the two front-runners, between Biggs and Schweikert, right?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, some differences there. Biggs has advocated for slowly, incrementally getting rid of income tax. And Schweikert was talking about how the math on that might not be what it seems, because if you cut tax in one area, then presumably you would have to raise it in another area or you would have to cut services.
And Biggs is saying, "No, we can get rid of income tax and not get rid of services." And his explanation was kind of, "Well, we would be getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse in other programs" ... This is a term we hear often. And he talked about Medicaid. He was like, if we eliminate Medicaid fraud, that would help us balance getting rid of the income tax.
I think there’s some outstanding questions about how that would play out exactly, how does the money translate from one thing to another and is that feasible? Schweikert really likes to think of himself as a numbers guy or a fiscal hawk, and if you’ve ever heard him speak, he loves charts and numbers. So he was doing his thing, being himself. He used a lot of these tax and financial issue questions.
MARK BRODIE: Well, did Schweikert say anything about making changes to the tax code in Arizona?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, and his explanation for paying for tax cuts was he wants to use state trust land and develop more of it. So using it for residential and also talked about that in terms of housing policy and expanding our housing options, really taking advantage of state trust land.
And that’s something that we’ve heard before from some Republicans. But he was very passionate about it, so I think that’s going to be a hallmark of his administration if he ever makes it.
MARK BRODIE: All right, we’ll see how that turns out. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez, thanks.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.
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