Journalists’ Roundtable: Selection of Arizona’s Lieutenant Governor and more

Aug. 14

Why does Arizona need a Lieutenant Governor?

Howie Fischer: “We’ve had governors who have been indicted and removed from office, governors impeached and removed from office, and Governor Janet Napolitano said, ‘I’m tired of this; I’m going to work for Obama.’ Sometimes, as in the case of [Governor] Napolitano, the person who replaced them under the old law was the Secretary of State, who is elected independently. You’ve got a situation where you think you’ve elected a Democrat, and all of a sudden, Jan Brewer’s the Governor. They finally concluded, ‘Why don’t we have a running mate?’ The same way the President and Vice President, they’re next in order. It took a long time to convince people because they said, ‘We’re going to create another position in state government? Why would we want to do that?’ You have to announce your running mate, as the Governor just did, and as Andy Biggs just did. They will serve as head of some agency to be determined by the Governor.”

Mark Brodie: “It’s undetermined. We’ve never done it before. They can be the Chief of Staff, they can be the head of the Department of Administration, they can be the head of another state agency or, basically anything the Governor can appoint somebody to, they can appoint the Lieutenant Governor to. To Howie’s point about not creating a whole new job in the state government, the Lieutenant Governor will do something somebody is already doing, but it probably depends. I would assume there were conversations between the top of the ticket, the gubernatorial candidate, and the Lieutenant Governor about what you would like to do if we win, and it probably depends on which of them wins. If Sine Kerr wants to do one thing and John Giles wants to do something else.”

Jeremy Duda: “The job of the running mate is to help the top of the ticket, the Governor candidate, get elected. That’s what Katie Hobbs is looking at when she picked John Giles: a lifelong Republican who turned further away from his party in the Trump era, endorsed Kamala Harris and spoke at the Democratic National Convention a few months ago. He decided a few months ago that the lifelong Republican moniker, he was done with it. He switched to Independent. It would be tough for Democrats to swallow Katie Hobbs running with a Republican running mate. An Independent running mate is not so tough to stomach. What she’s hoping for is that John Giles will appeal to the other disaffected Republicans who can’t stomach Trump or the center-right Independents who don’t like the MAGA movement, folks who might stay home and not vote at all. He can appeal to some of those folks and bring them into the polls. It’s going to be a tight race, and from that perspective, he’s probably a pretty good pick. Much like the Vice President, the effect is going to be marginal.”