PHOENIX – Days after Donald Trump was elected to a second time period, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs headed to the Mexican border with a conciliatory message.
“Border safety was a core difficulty of the Trump marketing campaign,” she mentioned. “I sit up for having conversations with the incoming president about Arizona’s wants.”
Again in Phoenix, Legal professional Normal Kris Mayes was plotting a authorized technique that has led to date to 5 lawsuits towards the Trump administration, on common one each 10 days since she took workplace.
Each Hobbs and Mayes are Democrats who will search reelection subsequent 12 months in a state that went for Trump. However they’ve adopted sharply totally different approaches to dealing with Trump’s return to the White Home: Restrained and collaborative for Hobbs; hardened and embattled for Mayes.
The methods encapsulate the talk consuming Democrats across the nation looking for a path again to energy. In successful over working class voters, Trump scrambled political allegiances and left Democrats struggling to piece collectively a viable coalition.
Arizona’s two prime elected officers are making totally different bets about what voters can be on the lookout for subsequent 12 months. Hobbs and Mayes each narrowly gained their workplaces in 2022. Mayes’ 280-vote victory was the closest in state historical past, and Hobbs won by lower than 1 share level.
“I don’t assume you possibly can yield to authoritarian, anti-democratic habits when it’s within the White Home and when our nation is in as a lot hazard as it’s proper now,” Mayes mentioned in a latest interview. “Our nation has by no means been on this a lot peril for the reason that Civil Battle.”
Hobbs declined an interview request. Her workforce issued a memo final week saying Arizona voters would see she “is critical about placing partisan politics apart to get issues performed.”
“They see her work with the Trump Administration and Republican Legislature after they share widespread targets, and so they see her stand as much as far-right proposals when they’re out of contact with Arizona,” wrote Nicole DeMont, the governor’s chief political strategist.
The disparate approaches owe considerably to their differing roles. As governor, Hobbs has to work with a Trump-friendly Republican legislature and may have to persuade the White Home for federal help throughout Trump’s presidency. As lawyer basic, Mayes has the prerogative to battle in courtroom.
Mayes can be prosecuting Trump aides and allies concerned in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The dynamic is far the identical in Michigan, one other battleground state Trump gained narrowly, the place Democratic Legal professional Normal Dana Nessel is aggressively confronting the Trump administration each legally and rhetorically, whereas Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been extra restrained.
Mayes and Nessel, each serving because the chief legislation enforcement officers of battleground states, have began a podcast collectively, “Pantsuits and Lawsuits.”
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been at occasions solicitous of Trump and Republicans as he pleads for catastrophe support to recuperate from wildfires as Legal professional Normal Rob Bonta sues.
To be clear, neither Hobbs nor Mayes could possibly be mistaken for a Trump supporter. However their differing approaches started even earlier than the election, when Mayes routinely appeared with Democrat Kamala Harris and her surrogates after they visited Arizona, whereas Hobbs stored her distance.
Mayes first sued Trump the day after he took workplace, when she joined a coalition of Democratic attorneys basic suing to dam an government order looking for to finish birthright citizenship.
Since then, she’s joined lawsuits difficult a blanket federal funding freeze, Nationwide Institutes of Well being funding cuts, Elon Musk’s function atop the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity and DOGE’s entry to delicate monetary data on the U.S. Treasury.
She held a city corridor assembly in Phoenix final week with the Democratic attorneys basic from Minnesota, New Mexico Oregon, drawing a whole lot of individuals involved about Musk’s dismantling of the federal workforce.
“I might similar to to see extra accountability,” mentioned Tatiana Johnson, a 24-year-old neighborhood organizer from Phoenix, who went to Mayes’ city corridor. She’s skeptical that Mayes’ lawsuits will restrain Trump, nevertheless it issues to her to see somebody combating.
“It might not make a distinction within the grand scheme of issues of Trump really listening to these, nevertheless it does make a distinction to me,” Johnson mentioned.
Hobbs, in the meantime, has been largely holding her hearth, generally irritating Democratic voters hungry for leaders to tackle Trump.
Arizonans need robust leaders “who will stand as much as a bully and who will shield our Structure and their rights,” Mayes mentioned. Voters repeatedly elected legendary Republican Sen. John McCain by huge margins, not as a result of they all the time agreed with him however as a result of “they knew he was combating for them.”
“That’s what I’m betting on,” she mentioned. “And we’ll discover out in 2026 whether or not I’m proper or improper.”
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