Phoenix (AP) –
Days after Donald Trump was elected in a second term, the governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, went to the Mexican border with a conciliatory message.
“Border security was a central topic of the Trump campaign,” she said. “I look forward to having talks with the incoming president about the needs of Arizona.”
Back in Phoenix, Attorney General Kris Mayes showed a legal strategy that has previously been on five lawsuits against the Trump administration, an average of every 10 days since taking office.
Both Hobbs and Mayes are Democrats who are striving for a re -election in a state next year that has chosen Trump. But they have followed very different approaches to the treatment of Trump’s return to the White House: reserved and collaborative for Hobbs; Harded and fought for Mayes.
The strategies embody the debate that Democrats consume across the country and try to find a way back to power. When Trump won the voters of the working class, Trump crawled political loyalities and had Democrats fought to put together a viable coalition.
The two best elected officers from Arizona make different bets about what the voters will look for next year. Hobbs and Mayes won their offices closely in 2022. Mayes’ 280 voting victory was closest to the history of state history, and won Hobbs with less than 1 percentage point.
“I don’t think you can give in authoritarian, anti -democratic behavior when it is in the White House and if our country is currently in danger,” Mayes said recently in an interview. “Our country has never been so much danger since the civil war.”
Hobbs refused an interview request. Her team published a memo last week in which the voters of Arizona would see that “she is serious to put partisan policy aside to do things”.
“You can see how you work with the Trump government and the Republican legislator when you share common goals and you see right-wing extremists if you are not in contact with Arizona,” wrote Nicole Demont, the governor’s top political strategist.
The different approaches owe something to their different roles. As a governor, Hobbs has to work with a trump -friendly Republican legislator and may have to punish the White House for the support of the White House during the Presidency of Trump. As a attorney in general, Mayes has the priority to fight in court.
Mayes also pursues Trump Adjutants and allies who are involved in his efforts to lift his loss of election in 2020.
The energetic is similar in Michigan, another battlefield state of Trump Knapp won, where the Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel aggressively confronted the Trump government, both legally and rhetorically, while governor Gretchen Whitmer was held back.
Mayes and Nessel, both of whom act as the leading law enforcement officers of battlefield states, have started a podcast “pants suits and lawsuits” together.
In California, governor Gavin Newsom was sometimes afraid of Trump and Republicans when he asks for a disaster relief to recover from forest fires, while Attorney General is suing Rob Bonta.
To be clear, neither Hobbs nor Mayes could be confused with a Trump trailer. But her different approaches began before the election when Mayes routinely appeared with the Democrat Kamala Harris and her surrogate mother when they visited Arizona while Hobbs left the distance.
The day after taking office, Mayes sued Trump for the first time when she joined a coalition of the democratic lawyers to block an executive regulation that had ended citizenship in the birth.
Since then, she has joined complaints that question a flat-rate federal finance from the National Institutes of Health Funding cuts, Elon Musks role on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Doges access to sensitive financial documents in the US Ministry of Finance.
Last week, she held a town hall meeting in Phoenix with the Democratic General Prosecutors from Minnesota, New Mexico Oregon, and pulled hundreds of people who dealt with Musk’s deposits of the federal workers.
“I would like to see more accountability,” said Tatiana Johnson, a 24-year-old community organizer from Phoenix, who went to the Mayes town hall. She is skeptical that Mayes Trump’s lawsuits hold back, but it is vital for her to see someone who is fighting.
“There may be no difference in the great scheme of things from Trump, which actually listens to it, but it makes a difference for me,” said Johnson.
Hobbs has now largely kept their fire and sometimes starving democratic voters that the leaders accept Trump.
Arizonans want mighty leaders “who can withstand a bully and who will protect our constitution and their rights,” said Mayes. The voters repeatedly chose the legendary Republican Senator John McCain from Great Margen, not because they always agreed with him, but because they knew that he was fighting for them. “
“I bet on that,” she said. “And in 2026 we will find out whether I am right or wrong.”
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