The controversy surrounds Sunshine Residential Homes, which got a nearly 60% rate increase after the foster care provider donated $500,000 to Hobbs campaign and the Democratic Party.
Mayes said there’s no evidence that Hobbs broke the law here and declined to prosecute. But Republicans in the state Legislature aren’t ready to let the case die.
This week, Sen. Jake Hoffman announced former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould will act as special counsel in the Senate’s impending investigation. And that represents something of a capitulation from the Freedom Caucus leader. Politics reporter Camryn Sanchez joined The Show to talk about it.
Full Conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Camryn.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, last week, Camryn, we had Sen. Jake Hoffman launching his own investigation into these pay-to-play allegations, even though the AG found the governor wasn’t at fault. What did he have to say about that? Why is he doing it?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Which, by the way, would not have been the first, second or even the third investigation, because we had the attorney general’s thing, and also there’s Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, and there’s the auditor general who works sort of for the state Legislature. So —
LAUREN GILGER: Lots of folks have looked into this.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes. And so, basically, Hoffman, his announcement came on the heels of Kris Mayes saying that she didn’t see anything that she could prosecute here. Athough she also did recommend in her report that she released that they beef up their transparency laws because she acknowledged, basically, that it kind of looks bad, even if it’s not going to court.
But he and, I guess, other Republican state lawmakers don’t believe that she did her due diligence. They say off the bat that it was a farce. Hoffman says that it was not a real investigation and that Mayes is doing basically Hobbs a favor, I guess because they’re both Democrats.
And so he’s going to take things into his own hands and he issued subpoenas to — well, he said he issued subpoenas to Hobbs and Mayes and a bunch of their staff, to the head of Sunshine Residential, to all these folks who were going to have to come in and testify to his committee. Although Mayes and Hobbs told me yesterday that they never received those subpoenas. But that was the plan until —
LAUREN GILGER: Right. This all changed, right, this week.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes.
LAUREN GILGER: And this was because it’s all happening, it sounds like, on the eve of this election, right? Gov. Katie Hobbs up for reelection, being challenged by Republican Andy Biggs. So, this move from Sen. Hoffman to look into this himself in his own committee to subpoena people was met with some questions about his role in the governor’s race in the campaign. Tell us what’s going on behind the scenes here.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Right. So, he was telling us, “This is going to be a completely impartial, nonpolitical investigation. It has nothing to do with politics. I would do this to any elected official at any time.” And we were like, OK, but also, he in his capacity outside the Legislature has this advertising agency and consulting firm, and he’s getting paid to help support Biggs’ campaign with advertisements and stuff.
We were like, OK, so you’re being paid $1 million-plus to assist Biggs’ campaign in fighting against the Hobbs campaign, their competitors, and you’re going to bring Hobbs in and grill her about this thing before early ballots go out, and people are going to see that and ask how it can be impartial.
He did not like that question. He initially declined to comment on it. Then he said he could chew gum and walk at the same time. But afterwards, I think there was sort of a barrage of all of our stories that came out and basically cited that connection. And then they decided to take things in a different direction.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So he has changed course this week, announced the appointment of Andrew Gould, as I said, as special counsel, and he’s transferring the investigation out of his own committee into the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Is this in response to those questions? What’s he saying about it?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, he blamed the media. He said the “crooked media” sort of was running cover for Hobbs and Kris Mayes, which is a term that he uses frequently, and that we had basically decided the outcome of this investigation before it started. So, to take away that excuse from the crooked, fake news media, he is moving it to Farnsworth so that it can be, you know, unquestionable.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, is this surprising, Camryn, that Sen. Hoffman did this? He’s not usually one for capitulating like this.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I was a little surprised, to be honest. Hoffman actually runs two committees. One of them is the Gov Committee, and one of them is what’s called the DINO Committee. And in that committee, basically he grills Hobbs’ appointees to lead state agencies, and he’s been running that for a few years, and we’ve had some very contentious hearings.
And so, I’ve seen Hoffman in action many times where he basically is up there on the dais and he’s asking all these tough, intense questions, and it gets really contentious. So I thought that this is basically going to be a version of that.
And so for him to change it up and delegate, I do wonder if maybe some other leadership members spoke to him, or if they sort of caucused amongst themselves and said, “You know, we don’t want every headline going forward to be Biggs’ consultant grills Gov. Hobbs,” stuff like that.
LAUREN GILGER: Tell us about this special counsel who’s now been appointed, former Supreme Court justice. Is he seen as someone who can be impartial here?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I would say it’s a very different kind of person than Hoffman, but I don’t know that Democrats could see him as impartial. I mean, he did run for Republican office, for example. He was a Supreme Court justice, so he has experience from the court side of things. But I still, you know, the term impartial, I don’t know if he would meet that standard for Democrats, the way that they see this.
LAUREN GILGER: For Democrats. What’s next in all this, Camryn? Should we expect this investigation to move very quickly in light of a very close election coming up here?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: They haven’t given us a date, but I could see it happening before Oct. 7, which is when I believe the early ballots come out. I just don’t know exactly what we’re expecting to come out of all of this that would be different than, again, what Mayes said, what the auditor general’s looking into, what Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is doing.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, let me ask you lastly about this alleged conflict of interest from Jake Hoffman here, his role as a political consultant. It’s come up more than once in recent news cycles, right?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Oh, yeah. I mean, he’s been working with Turning Point for a long time. He’s kind of got his hands in a lot of things. He’s represented us with the Republican national stuff, and he has been active in Arizona politics for a long time working on other campaigns. But it’s also not entirely unique. I mean, a lot of them have jobs outside of the Legislature and a lot of them work on stuff like that.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, not entirely out of the ordinary, but certainly raised questions here. All right, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez joining us from our Politics Desk. Camryn, thanks as always. Appreciate it.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.
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