Gov. Katie Hobbs and John Giles, her lieutenant governor nominee, celebrate the initial batch of voting results at the Arizona Democratic Party's election night party in Phoenix on Nov. 3, 2026. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who outspent her Republican opponent Andy Biggs by 2.5 times, was leading the Arizona gubernatorial race by 18 points when the secretary of state posted initial election night results Tuesday night.
Unofficial election night results show the incumbent Hobbs with 58% of votes counted to Biggs’ 40%. Those votes are all early ballots that were returned prior to Election Day. Hundreds of thousands of voters cast ballots or turned in early ballots on Tuesday, and those have yet to be counted.
“You smell that? Smells like victory!” U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego told the crowd at the Arizona Democratic Party’s election night watch party after the first round of results highly favored Democrats.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.
That should be no surprise to those who followed the race, with Hobbs, the former Arizona Secretary of State, consistently polling ahead of her veteran Republican congressman opponent. Biggs made up some ground in the weeks leading up to the election, but a HighGround poll released Oct. 27 still showed the governor with a 12 point lead.
Hobbs raised a whopping $15 million this election cycle to Biggs’ nearly $5.8 million, blanketing the internet and airwaves in attack ads, while Biggs’ campaign lacked the funds to keep up.
Biggs, the former leader of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, was backed by Turning Point USA, the far-right organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
Turning Point PAC spent $18 million over the past two years to try to reelect Biggs, including by erecting “Democrats for Biggs” signs all over the Valley, in some neighborhoods at all four corners of every intersection.
Biggs is an election denier who was front and center in efforts to “Stop the Steal” after President Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. He joined fellow Arizona GOP Congressman Paul Gosar in spreading doubt about the results of the 2020 election and made claims of voter disenfranchisement that were not backed up by evidence.
Former Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Rusty Bowers said Biggs called him the morning of January 6 asking him to sign onto a letter calling for the decertification of Arizona electors. Biggs, who voted to reject electoral votes for Biden from Arizona and other battleground states, later allegedly sought a pardon from Trump for his involvement; he denied ever doing so.
Like other MAGA candidates this election cycle, Biggs suffered from his loyalty to Trump, whose approval rating is at 37% amid high gas and grocery prices, an unpopular war in Iran and a shockingly violent mass deportation agenda.
Alongside her campaign’s spending, Hobbs got about $10 million in support from the Democratic Governors Association. The Republican Governors Association stayed out of the race and did not spend to back Biggs.
The nasty campaign saw both sides accusing the other of supporting pedophiles over their victims.
The Hobbs campaign pointed to Biggs’ blocking of legislation in 2013, when he was president of the Arizona Senate, that was meant to protect young girls who were part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a polygamous and insular religious sect that split from the mainstream LDS church. In addition to polygamy, the splinter sect also practices child marriage, with girls as young as nine years old being forced into marriages with older men and church leaders.
Biggs said he voted against the measure because it was poorly drafted and law enforcement didn’t support it.
The Biggs campaign went after Hobbs for vetoing legislation that would have increased penalties for sex offenders. Hobbs said the laws on the books were already sufficient and that the legislation was written too broadly.
Since she beat Republican Kari Lake by 17,000 votes in 2022, Hobbs has blocked some of the most extreme legislation passed by the Republicans who controlled both chambers of the Arizona Legislature during that time.
Since she took office in 2023, Hobbs has vetoed a record 541 pieces of legislation, almost all of it backed by only Republicans.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Courtesy of Arizona Mirror
