Journalists’ Roundtable: Gov. Hobbs’ potential pick for Lieutenant Governor and more

Aug. 7

Governor Katie Hobbs’ search for a Lieutenant Governor

Dennis Welch: “Early in the week, ‘The New York Times’ broke a story citing two anonymous sources that John Giles was going to be the pick, [that] she was picking the former Republican mayor of Mesa to be her running mate, the first time for the Democrats for a sitting Governor to be running with a running mate. But when you would call the Governor’s campaign, they were very insistent they were not going to confirm or deny anything in those reports, so I know that the Governor’s campaign has been pressed about this all week.”

Wayne Schutsky: “The common knowledge here is you want a candidate that’s not going to lose you an election, but the best Lieutenant Governor is not going to win you an election. I think Giles is a smart choice in that sense. As far as why they don’t want to confirm it, I think we all anticipated after ‘The New York Times’ story coming out, the campaign would confirm the news, that someone close to them leaked to ‘The New York Times.’ No idea why they’re holding off.”

Jim Small: “It definitely does take away some of the impact. The normal cadence for these things a lot of times is a campaign will leak some information to a news outlet, they’ll publish a scoop based on anonymous sources, and a day later, they make an official announcement. That’s not what they’re doing right now. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it takes the impact and the gravitas away from this if they ultimately do announce Giles.”