Senate lawsuit against Gov. Katie Hobbs already has a loser (Hint: It's you)

Now that we’ve finished up with all that peace on earth and goodwill stuff, it’s time for hostilities to resume between the so-called leaders of our great state.

To that end, Arizona’s Republican-run Senate is suing Arizona’s Democratic governor.

This, because Gov. Katie Hobbs refuses to nominate any more state agency directors.

That, because the Senate refused to even consider most of her appointees this year.

Meanwhile, some nominees who were so privileged as to rate a confirmation hearing now have an inkling of what it must have been like during the Spanish Inquisition.

OK, so that’s maybe a bit of an exaggeration. Possibly.

Here’s something that isn’t an exaggeration. Taxpayers will foot the bill both to bring this lawsuit and to defend against it.

Either way, we lose.

Senate wanted to punish Gov. Hobbs

The Great Arizona Confirmation Conflict has been raging for most of the year, ever since Senate President Warren Petersen set up a special committee in January to vet all of Hobbs’ nominees — dumping the decades-long process that assigned standing committees to vet candidates appointed to run agencies within the panel’s area of oversight.

Then he tapped his protégé, Sen. Jake Hoffman, a fake elector who chairs the far right Arizona Freedom Caucus, to serve as chairman and chief saboteur of the new Senate Committee on Director Nominations.

Hoffman’s hearings were at times more like interrogations, as Hobbs’ nominees were grilled not just on their qualifications but on their political leanings. His delight was evident as his panel turned thumbs down to several of her appointees and declined even to schedule hearings for more than a dozen others.

Not because they weren’t qualified but in retaliation for Hobbs issuing executive orders he didn’t like.

Having the power to sabotage your political enemies is a heady thing indeed.

Never mind the damage done to the state of Arizona where we have no confirmed agency directors to oversee the state’s critical needs, from social services and prisons to public health, nursing home oversight and child safety.

So, Hobbs found an end-around

In the end, the Senate has confirmed just six of Hobbs’ nearly two dozen nominees.

Hoffman’s committee chased away a clearly qualified candidate to run the Department of Health Services and rejected a former Democratic legislator nominated to run the Registrar of Contractors because they didn’t like his politics.

Hobbs withdrew a third nominee amid questions about his fitness to run the Department of Child Safety.

Meanwhile, 13 agency heads were left twisting in the wind. Agency directors can serve only for a year if they can’t win Senate confirmation.

So Hobbs drew up a new play, promptly withdrawing her 13 still-unconfirmed agency nominees this fall and reappointing them as “executive assistant directors” who need no Senate approval.

“It is clear that this Committee is being used as a weapon, wielded for the personal whim of a few legislators,” Hobbs wrote, in a September letter to Petersen. “This Committee, although ostensibly intended to evaluate the fitness for office for my nominees, is instead revealing the complete lack of fitness of the Committee Chair, Sen. Jake Hoffman.”

She's not the first governor to do this

Hobbs is clearly thumbing her nose at both state law and the Senate, but she’s not the first governor to do it.

Republican Gov. Fife Symington pulled a similar maneuver in 1991 when the then-Democratic Senate refused to confirm his nominee to head the Department of Administration. So, he gave his pick the No. 2 job and never named a No. 1.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey appointed an interim director to run the DHS for well over a year in the aftermath of COVID-19. He was never confirmed and Republican senators never raised a stink.

Now, you have a Democratic governor doing essentially the same thing and here comes the Senate’s lawsuit, filed by a pair of private lawyers paid for (by us) to sue (us).

“Katie Hobbs has demonstrated a childish refusal to work with anyone not in the far-left political spectrum, and a total disdain for following the law,” Hoffman said, after the lawsuit was filed. “Her decision to grind Arizona to an operational standstill rather than follow Arizona law is possibly the saddest commentary on Democrats’ seriousness yet.”

Stop fighting and making us pay for it

Speaking of sad commentaries, it’s time for the enemy combatants to grow the heck up and find a compromise.

Hobbs should stop the end run on the Senate and follow state law, which requires her to promptly nominate agency directors who are then subject to the consent of the Senate.

Petersen should give his hitman the hook and name a new chairman, somebody more interested in the smooth operation of the state than in sticking it the governor.

Don't sue Hobbs: Call off your attack dog, senators

If Petersen can’t find a fair-minded senator to oversee confirmations, then he should oversee Senate confirmations himself — or return to the process of old, where the governor’s nominees were considered by the standing Senate committees best schooled in the subject matter.

You can’t run a state with what amounts to temps. Not well, anyway.

You certainly can’t expect to attract the best and the brightest, knowing that a fun run through Hoffman’s gauntlet awaits them.

And you absolutely shouldn’t be using taxpayer money to sue because you can’t figure out how to work together.

We lose in that deal, because either way, we pay.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at @laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Senate v. Katie Hobbs already has a loser: You