Phoenix, Arizona: Katie Hobbs Wins Second Term as Governor, Defeats Andy Biggs

PHOENIX (Orbit Post) Gov. Katie Hobbs won a second term on Tuesday night, defeating Republican Rep. Andy Biggs and turning a race she won by less than a point four years ago into a comfortable reelection. Decision Desk HQ called the race at 10:11 p.m. Eastern time, and CBS News called it shortly after 8:30 p.m. Arizona time.

In the Decision Desk HQ count at 11:43 p.m. Eastern time, Hobbs had 968,666 votes, 58.22 percent, to 669,599, 40.25 percent, for Biggs. The Associated Press count told the same story without a call: Hobbs at 971,528 votes to 678,771 for Biggs, with 1,195 of 1,762 precincts reporting.

Hobbs will be the first Democratic governor of Arizona to win a second term since Janet Napolitano won reelection in 2006. She was first elected in 2022 by less than 1 percentage point, a race that took days to settle. This one did not. Hobbs and her running mate, former Republican Mesa Mayor John Giles, spoke briefly to supporters at the Arizona Democratic Party's election night event at a Phoenix resort before the first results were even reported.

A different race from 2022

The margin was not the only change. This was the first Arizona election in which voters picked a lieutenant governor on the same ticket as the governor. Hobbs chose Giles, a Republican, as a statement of the bipartisan pitch she ran on. Biggs chose former state Sen. Sine Kerr, a farmer from Buckeye and a Trump administration agriculture official.

Hobbs, who served four years as secretary of state and eight years as a state lawmaker before winning the governorship, ran on pragmatism and on working across party lines. She also ran with a large money edge: her campaign spent $17.8 million through the end of September, while Biggs spent just over $5 million in the same period, according to the Arizona Republic.

Biggs, a congressman and close ally of President Donald Trump, won the Republican nomination in July with more than 70 percent of the vote. He had the president's endorsement and the state's registration numbers behind him: registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by almost 300,000 in Arizona, and independents are the largest bloc. It was not enough. Hobbs led all 17 publicly released polls tracked by the nonpartisan site 270 to Win going back to February 2025, and her polling lead sat outside the margin of error in every public survey since late August.

Counting continues

Arizona's count is not finished. Tuesday night's returns leaned on early ballots, which is how most Arizonans vote. Election Day ballots are tallied next, then mail ballots dropped off near Election Day go through signature verification before they are added. Results stay unofficial until county and state officials certify them, which must happen by Nov. 23.