Hobbs withdraws nominees from state Senate consideration

Governor Katie Hobbs is making an end run around the state Senate when it comes to state agency leaders, appointing her picks to newly created “executive deputy director” jobs.

Her office said the blame is on the Senate’s “political circus” and more specifically Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman of Queen Creek, who leads a committee created earlier this year that has upended how confirmations have been done for decades at the Capitol.

Hobbs said 13 people she had chosen to lead state agencies would be withdrawn from the Senate confirmation process and named to the newly created roles, framing it as the only way to ensure state government continues to provide services to Arizonans.

Chuck Coughlin, President of Highground, Inc., joined Arizona Horizon to discuss why the Governor made this decision.

“She’s entitled to make deputy directors, if they want to sue about that they’ll have to deal with the attorney general,” Coughlin said. “My instinct is that the attorney general will back the governor on that.”

Coughlin says that Hobbs is not the first governor to do this, Governor Symington did something similar in 1991.

“I’ve never seen in my 30 years of doing this, anything like this,” Coughlin said. “The governor is entitled to the benefit of the doubt and have her appointees serve her without some qualification.”