Arizona Democrats chose the wrong candidate for governor

As I’ve watched the Arizona statewide elections, I’ve wondered what would have happened had the Democrats run the right candidate for governor.

At the moment, they’ve got Katie Hobbs, who so far has failed to prove she can adapt to the ever-changing environment of high-stakes politics.

She has made two large mistakes this campaign. She demurred from debating Republican Kari Lake and failed to shore up her problem with minority voters.

But it’s the debate that lingers. Her refusal to engage in one feeds doubts both left and right that she has the mettle to compete. Hobbs seems to fear Kari Lake and her polished anchorwoman poise and delivery.

Democrats' best candidate is for attorney general

Had the Democrats run the right candidate for governor, this wouldn’t be an issue.

I suspect no one tells Kris Mayes what to do, but had the Democrats run her for governor instead of attorney general, none of this would be a problem.

Kris Mayes would not have ducked a debate with Kari Lake. She would have relished it.

She would have taken all of Kari Lake’s conspiracy theories and election denials and wrapped them around her feet the way they rope calves at the World’s Oldest Rodeo in Mayes’ hometown of Prescott.

Where they stand: Attorney general debate gets heated on abortion, experience

Mayes is one of the sharpest thinkers in Arizona politics. She’s tough and accomplished and can bring it.

She reminds me of something former Arizona Coyotes head coach Dave Tippett used to say: “Confidence is earned.”

Mayes is confident and always on the attack in her attorney general race because she has clocked a lot of time as a journalist in the cauldron of presidential politics and as a regulator taking on the titans of Big Power.

She can think on her feet. She can think ahead. She can drive an agenda.

If this were a Mayes vs. Lake matchup, it would not be the Democrat who feels fear.

Kris Mayes has earned her confidence

If you read this as professional courtesy among journalists, don’t. I know Mayes as a newsmaker. I could care less that she ever worked at The Republic. Furthermore, former journalists will tell you that I’ve not been kind to them lately.

In her first career, Mayes was a reporter who wrote on politics for The Phoenix Gazette and The Arizona Republic. She aspired to cover presidential politics and become one of “The Boys on the Bus,” the title of journalist Timothy Crouse’s legendary chronicle of the 1972 presidential campaign.

But she was denied access to John McCain’s bus when he ran for president in 2000. McCain, who could be cantankerous, was nursing a decade-long grudge against his hometown newspaper and made no room for its reporter on his Straight Talk Express.

There was plenty of room for other journalists. Just none for The Republic’s.

That didn’t stop Mayes. She followed Straight Talk in a rental car, writing stories on the Arizona candidate for his hometown newspaper.

Then came the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz sniffing around, asking why the McCain campaign had shunned its local paper and its woman reporter.

Pretty soon Straight Talked turned to Sweet Talk. McCain dialed up the charm.

Even Maverick McCain had a change of heart

“‘Kris, Kris, Kris, come here,’ ” the senator said to Mayes at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “He grabbed her by the arm and tugged her toward the bus,” recounted David Fritze, Mayes’ editor at the time.

As Mayes described it then, “We went into the bus, and everybody in the McCain campaign started cheering. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, my moment in the sun. I’ve made it to the bus.’ ”

But Mayes added a little rural-Arizona seasoning to that moment, a little rugged individualism, when she added, “I kind of liked being the girl not on the bus.”

Mayes got her undergraduate and law degree from Arizona State University and Master’s from Columbia. While earning her law degree, then Gov. Janet Napolitano chose her to be her press secretary.

No doubt Napolitano, tough minded and a stickler for details, saw a kindred soul in Mayes.

One of my strongest memories of Napolitano was how she used to shoo away staff when it came time to describe the details of her spending blueprint. Other governors would turn the details over to their budget director. Not Napolitano. She had full command of the numbers and the room.

Mayes is wired the same way. Regulatory law is a labyrinth of minutia and technical complexity that she mastered when Napolitano appointed her to the Corporation Commission. Mayes used her knowledge to challenge the utilities, hold the line on price increases and push for new renewable energy standards.

Katie Hobbs could learn a lot from Mayes

Confidence is earned, and Mayes is using hers to set the agenda in the attorney general’s race and to magnify the inexperience of her opponent, Abe Hamadeh, who has become the speed bag to her punches.

If Mayes has a weakness, it is her temptation to use her knowledge as a cudgel. I once watched her work over an APS engineer in one of our editorial board meetings in a way that was merciless and over the top. Her criticism may have been legitimate, but it was a bad look. She needed to know when she had won. When to ease up.

These are small things, but they go to likeability, which can be a big thing in a governor’s race.

She has all the tools for the top job and is most likeable and genuine when she talks about her love of Arizona, the state where she grew up.

Democrats would have done well to put her at the top of the ticket.

They may one day yet.

As for a contest with Kari Lake, we’ll see that if they both win their 2022 elections.

Because I can imagine Lake as governor and Mayes as attorney general.

But I can’t imagine them ever getting along.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kris Mayes, not Katie Hobbs, should be running for Arizona governor