Biggs campaigns like it's 1986
Choosing Kerr for geographical balance would have made sense ... 40 years ago.
In choosing a lieutenant governor running mate, Andy Biggs was boxed in. He didn’t have the political space to choose someone who might marginally improve his general election chances.
Despite having a registration advantage in Arizona, Republicans have consistently lost the big statewide races for four election cycles. During that period, they have lost four U.S. Senate contests. In 2022, MAGA Republicans lost the election for the three top state offices: governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.
Come 2026, you don’t get more MAGA than Andy Biggs. He had a productive record as a state legislator. He knows state issues. However, that has been overshadowed by his Trumpification as a congressman. Most egregious, and most relevant to his gubernatorial bid, was his vote to reject Arizona’s Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election.
As the last four election cycles have demonstrated, the MAGA GOP base is insufficient to win a statewide election. To win, a Republican candidate has to attract a competitive share of independents and keep non-MAGA Republicans from defecting.
The latter is often overlooked. In 2024, the Arizona presidential primary took place after Trump had locked up the nomination and Nikki Haley had dropped out. Haley nevertheless got 18% of the votes. This was a closed primary; only registered Republicans were eligible to participate. And over 110,000 high-efficacy GOP voters turned out to cast what can only be interpreted as a protest vote against the Trump takeover of the Republican Party.
With his lt. governor nominee, Biggs could have theoretically chosen someone who would appeal to the independents and non-MAGA Republicans who will determine his fate this November. As a matter of practical politics, however, that wasn’t an option available to Biggs, even if he were inclined toward it, which I suspect he wasn’t. The MAGA movement is unforgiving about such pragmatic political considerations. It would have rabidly denounced any lt. governor candidate with that appeal as a RINO. It would have lit a backfire in Biggs’s base.
Since semi-balancing the ticket ideologically wasn’t an option available to Biggs, he decided to balance it geographically, with former legislator Sine Kerr, a dairy farmer. Biggs, goes the explanation, will attract urban voters while Kerr will attract rural ones.
Such a geographic balance might have been a useful move by a Republican …forty years ago.
In Arizona, Republicans didn’t surpass Democrats in registration until the election of 1986. However, Arizona’s rural counties remained heavily Democratic. In fact, Democrats outnumbered Republicans in 11 of the 13 rural counties (excluding Maricopa and Pima).
However, many of them were truly conservative Democrats, both fiscally and culturally. They were an important swing target for Republicans, particularly in statewide races.
Move forward 40 years, and only three of the rural counties still have a Democratic advantage in registration. Overall, Republicans outnumber Democrats in rural Arizona by more than 80,000 registrants. And, in actual voting, rural Arizona is solidly red.
Kari Lake is probably the best example of someone too MAGA to win a statewide election in Arizona. However, in unsuccessful bids for both governor and U.S. Senate, Lake carried the rural counties by more than 100,000 votes. She lost both elections in Maricopa County.
Nearly 60% of Arizona registered voters live in Maricopa County. Registration trends over time further illustrate how anachronistic Biggs’s geographical balancing gambit is.
In 1986, Republicans constituted 52% of registered voters in Maricopa County. Today, they are just under 35%. In 1986, independents were only 12% of registered voters. Today, they are a shade over 35%. In Maricopa County today, independents actually outnumber Republicans and recent registration trends suggest the delta will likely increase moving into November.
Biggs won’t overcome the electoral math that has kept Republicans from winning the big statewide races for four election cycles by running up bigger margins in rural Arizona. He will only succeed by doing better with independents and non-MAGA Republicans, particularly in Maricopa County.
The Kerr choice does nothing to advance that. In fact, because of her ardent social conservatism, she might set it back a bit.
Katie Hobbs has her own obstacles in seeking re-election. She barely won in 2022 and has had an underwhelming governorship. Moreover, the Republican registration advantage has meaningfully increased since 2022. This election cycle she needs an even larger share of independents and non-MAGA Republicans to prevail.
However, she didn’t have an ideological box comparable to the one Biggs found himself in. She felt free to choose John Giles as her running mate, a former mayor of Mesa. And a former Republican, now registered as an independent. This was a pick firmly aimed at the independents and non-MAGA Republicans who will decide the election.
Even before the pick, GOP hacks were dismissing Giles as always a RINO, and hence not really a move by Hobbs toward the center. I realize that party hacks have to say dumb things. But this is particularly obtuse. Without RINOs, without the Haley voters, Republicans can’t win a statewide election in Arizona. Denouncing them, rather than courting them, is a formula for a fifth straight election cycle of GOP failure in the big races.
Now, I think the lt. governor position shouldn’t exist. There were better ways of solving the succession problem – a governor of one party yielding to a secretary of state of another – than creating an additional, useless political office.
Moreover, I doubt that the lt. governor choices will make any difference in the outcome. In the end, voters will decide whether they prefer Hobbs or Biggs as governor, with little to no weight given to who that would make lt. governor and what he or she will be doing.
However, the choices do indicate that, at this point, Hobbs has a better understanding of what she has to do to win than Biggs does.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.