Arizona Politics: Vetoes, Budget, Vouchers, and Prop 139

Arizona politics in 2025 and 2026 is defined by divided government: Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs faces a Republican-controlled legislature in a swing state where independents rival either party in registration. The result has been a record run of vetoes, a Republican strategy of bypassing the governor by sending measures straight to voters, court fights that have already reshaped abortion and school-funding law, and a November 2026 ballot that will decide much of what the legislature and governor could not.

Who Holds Power

Hobbs, who won the 2022 governor’s race by less than a percentage point, holds the executive office. Republicans hold both chambers of the legislature, with a 33-27 majority in the House and a 17-13 edge in the Senate as of early 2026.¹ The GOP has held the state House continuously since 1966 and the Senate since 1993, though recent margins have often come down to a single seat.²

The electorate is genuinely split. As of April 2026, Arizona had about 4.34 million registered voters: roughly 35.5% Republican, 28.1% Democratic, and 34.5% unaffiliated or minor party.³ Biden carried the state by just over 10,000 votes in 2020. Trump won it back in 2024 with 52.2% to Kamala Harris’s 46.7%, and Republicans flipped the state’s other U.S. Senate seat that same cycle.⁴ Maricopa County holds over 60% of the state’s population and drives most statewide outcomes.⁵

The Veto War and the Ballot Workaround

The 2026 legislative session, which ran January 12 to June 13, produced 2,190 legislative proposals. Hobbs signed 125 bills and vetoed at least 151 during the session alone. Her total since taking office in January 2023 stands at 541 vetoes.⁶⁷

She rejected Republican bills across the map. On elections, she vetoed measures to require watermarks on ballot paper and to make cast vote records public. On social policy, she blocked bills that would have allowed lawsuits against providers who perform gender-transition procedures on minors and banned diversity and equity measures in state hiring.⁸ She vetoed immigration enforcement bills on constitutional and litigation-cost grounds, and struck down environmental measures including one that would have blocked state involvement in reintroducing Mexican gray wolves.⁷ Earlier in the session, she declared a “bill moratorium,” refusing to act on further legislation until Republican leaders released their budget proposal.⁹

Not everything drew a veto. Hobbs signed bills requiring law enforcement to report missing children to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children within 24 hours, regulating vape and nicotine sales to minors, and adding fentanyl sentencing enhancements.⁷

Unable to override her vetoes on their priority bills, Republicans turned to a constitutional workaround. Concurrent resolutions can place questions directly on the ballot without the governor’s signature. Seven such resolutions went through in the session’s final days, many on party-line votes during late-night sessions. Voters will decide these questions in November 2026:⁶

HCR 2001 would require government-issued ID to cast a ballot, prohibit foreign nationals from spending money to influence elections, mandate on-site ballot tabulation at polling locations, and eliminate the active early voter list that automatically mails ballots to voters.¹⁰
HCR 2048, framed as supporting military families’ college savings, would according to critics constitutionally entrench the state’s universal school voucher program.
HCR 2044 would prohibit what it calls “racially discriminatory DEI practices” across state institutions, including K-12 schools and universities.
SCR 1004 would ban automated cameras for enforcing speeding and red-light laws unless a community’s voters specifically approve them.

The Bipartisan Budget

The exception to the veto war was the budget. Hobbs and Republican leaders agreed on an $18.3 billion spending plan she signed on June 13, 2026, calling it the “Arizona First” budget.¹¹ It contains roughly $1.4 billion in tax cuts over three years, mostly by conforming the state code to recent federal changes under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Those changes eliminate state taxes on tips and overtime, raise the standard deduction, and add deductions for seniors, childcare expenses, and an expanded child tax credit.¹²

On the spending side, the budget backfills roughly $300 million in general fund money for K-12 schools after Proposition 123 expired, funds free school meals, adds a 4% stipend for correctional officers, and directs $48 million to childcare assistance and $55.8 million to court-mandated healthcare staffing in state prisons. Health provisions include $4 million for the 988 crisis hotline, $4.3 million in one-time rural hospital aid, and new Medicaid eligibility-verification requirements.¹³ A three-year moratorium on new data-center tax incentives is projected to save the state $57 million.¹²

Schools: The Funding Ruling and the Voucher Fight

Education is running on two tracks at once. On the traditional public school side, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain Fox issued a 114-page ruling in August 2025 in Glendale Elementary School District v. State of AZ School Facilities Funding, declaring Arizona’s public school capital finance system unconstitutional. The ruling cited crumbling buildings, leaking roofs, broken temperature controls, and shortages of basic equipment such as computers and school buses.¹⁴¹⁵ The suit had been pending since 2017. Judge Fox ordered lawmakers and the governor to devise a compliant funding system by early November, warning that failure could result in the state treasurer being blocked from distributing education funds at all. Republican legislative leaders appealed, arguing the judge exceeded his authority. As of June 2026, the Court of Appeals had not yet scheduled arguments.¹⁶

The other track is the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, which provides public funds for families to use at private schools or for other educational expenses. As of January 2026, enrollment topped 100,000 students at a gross cost approaching $1 billion. The Department of Education needed an additional $59.8 million above its appropriation in fiscal year 2026 just to cover growth, with projections estimating $154.2 million more will be needed in fiscal year 2027.¹⁷ Hobbs has proposed limiting eligibility to families earning under $250,000 a year, and the Arizona Education Association is advancing a voucher-reform ballot measure that will appear before voters in November 2026. HCR 2048, the Republican-referred measure described above, would push in the opposite direction.

Abortion After Proposition 139

Arizona voters passed Proposition 139, the Arizona Abortion Access Act, in November 2024. It amended the state constitution to protect the right to abortion until fetal viability, roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy.¹⁸ The state’s near-total 1864 abortion ban had already been repealed by the legislature in May 2024.

Courts have since used the amendment to strike down other restrictions. In March 2025, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz permanently blocked the state’s 15-week abortion ban. Attorney General Kris Mayes had already agreed not to enforce it while the case was pending.¹⁹ In February 2026, Judge Gregory Como issued a separate permanent injunction blocking a ban on abortion for fetal genetic abnormalities, a prohibition on telemedicine for medication abortions, mandatory ultrasound and state-scripted counseling requirements, and a 24-hour waiting period. He ruled that their “universal suppression of medical judgment and choice” failed the constitutional standard voters set. Republican legislative leaders have announced plans to appeal.²⁰

Elections and Voting Rights

Election rules are being fought on two fronts. In February 2025, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down several provisions of 2022 state laws that had attempted to require documentary proof of citizenship for voters registering with the federal form, along with provisions giving county recorders authority to cancel registrations based on a “reason to believe” a voter is not a citizen.²¹²²²³ In 2024, the Court allowed Arizona to require proof of citizenship for state and local elections but not for federal races. About 32,000 Arizonans are currently registered as “federal only” voters.¹⁰

On the ballot front, HCR 2001 puts the question of government-issued photo ID at every election directly to voters, along with the elimination of the automatic early ballot mailing list and a move-up of the deadline for returning early ballots to the Friday before Election Day. Over 264,000 Arizonans used Election Day drop-offs for their early ballots in 2024. Officials from the Secretary of State’s office have warned that some provisions could require thousands of new polling locations and tens of millions of dollars in additional costs.¹⁰

Immigration

Immigration consistently ranks as the top concern for Arizona voters.⁵ In 2024, voters approved Proposition 314, the “Secure the Border Act.” It created a state crime for entering Arizona from Mexico without legal status, imposed new document-verification requirements for state benefits, criminalized using false identification to pass E-Verify, and established strict penalties for fentanyl sales.

Not all of Prop 314 is currently in force. The illegal-entry provision was designed to take effect only after a similar law in Texas had been in force for 60 days, and federal courts have blocked that Texas law. The document-verification and fentanyl provisions are in effect.²⁴

During the 2026 session, the legislature passed additional immigration enforcement bills, several of which Hobbs vetoed. Blocked measures included bills that would have required reporting of undocumented arrestees and expanded immigration data sharing.⁸ Attorney General Mayes reached a stipulated agreement with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to pause the conversion of a warehouse in Surprise into a federal detention facility pending an environmental impact study.²⁵

Colorado River Negotiations

Negotiations over new rules for sharing the Colorado River, which supplies water to Arizona, California, Nevada, and four upper-basin states, missed a federal deadline of February 14, 2026 and remain stalled. Federal officials have indicated they could impose their own plan but have not yet done so. The Bureau of Reclamation has been without a permanent commissioner since January 2025, and the process lacks a formal third-party facilitator.²⁶ If the Bureau enforces one of the five management alternatives it outlined in January 2026, prolonged litigation, potentially reaching the Supreme Court, is considered likely. Hobbs vetoed six water-related bills during the 2026 session.

Key Figures to Know

Governor Katie Hobbs. She has governed largely as a check on the Republican legislature, using her veto power heavily while looking for bipartisan deals where possible; the 2026 budget is the most prominent example. Her office reported that Arizona ranked third nationally in job growth in the first quarter of 2026, and she became the first Arizona governor to visit all 22 federally recognized tribes in the state.¹¹

Attorney General Kris Mayes. A Democrat, she has been active on civil rights, consumer protection, and immigration. Her Civil Rights Division resolved 128 cases in fiscal year 2025 and recovered over $2 million for discrimination victims.²⁷ She secured a $3.3 million price-fixing settlement from egg producers, filed 42 healthcare fraud indictments, and directed $10 million in opioid settlement funds to rural reentry programs. After the legislature eliminated a long-standing civil rights board, she created a new advisory council within her office.²⁵ She also won a court order blocking a Trump administration executive order that sought federal control over state election administration.

Senator Ruben Gallego. The Democrat won the 2024 U.S. Senate race and now serves as Arizona’s junior senator. He sits on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and helped shape the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the Senate in October 2025 as part of the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.²⁸

Kari Lake. The Republican who lost the 2022 governor’s race to Hobbs by roughly 17,000 votes and the 2024 Senate race to Gallego was nominated by President Trump in May 2026 to serve as U.S. ambassador to Jamaica. She previously served as an official at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, a tenure cut short after a federal judge ruled her appointment was improper because she had not been confirmed by the Senate. Her Senate campaign still carried over $1 million in debt as of April 2026, and her lawyers were sanctioned $122,000 by the Arizona Supreme Court for filing a frivolous election-challenge lawsuit, with one attorney’s license suspended for 60 days.²⁹

The through-line across all of it is November 2026. Voters, not legislators or the governor, will decide most of the year’s biggest questions: how elections are run, how vouchers are protected or reformed, whether DEI programs continue in state institutions, and whether cities can use automated traffic cameras. The courts will decide the rest.

1
National Conference of State Legislatures. State Partisan Composition
2
Arizona Capitol Times. A Look at the Past to Imagine Tied, Flipped Legislature
3
Arizona Secretary of State. Voter Registration Statistics
4
Politico. Arizona Election Results
5
ACLED. Sun Belt Showdown: Exploring Swing State Dynamics
6
Arizona Mirror. AZ Legislature Ends 2026 Session
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Arizona Mirror. Katie Hobbs Adds 88 Vetoes to Her Record
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Office of the Arizona Governor. Governor Katie Hobbs Legislative Action Update
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Office of the Arizona Governor. Governor Katie Hobbs Legislative Action Update
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Arizona Mirror. GOP Pushes Constitutional Amendment to Restrict Arizona Early Voting
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Office of the Arizona Governor. News Releases
12
Arizona Capitol Times. Hobbs Signs $18.3 Billion Bipartisan Budget
13
Arizona Medical Association. Arizona’s $18.3 Billion Budget: What Physicians Need to Know
14
Arizona Luminaria. Judge Rules AZ School Funding Is Unconstitutional
15
JURIST. Arizona Court Finds K-12 School Funding System Unconstitutional
16
Arizona Capitol Times. Funding Freeze: GOP Seeks Delay in State School Overhaul
17
Arizona Capitol Times. ESA Program Reaches 100,000 Students, Costs Soar Past $1B
18
The Guardian. Arizona Court Ruling: 15-Week Abortion Ban
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ACLU. Arizona 15-Week Abortion Ban Permanently Blocked
20
Arizona Mirror. Judge: Arizona Abortion Laws Are Unconstitutional After 2024 Amendment
21
Voting Rights Lab. The Markup
22
Politico. Supreme Court Voting Registration Citizenship Arizona
23
PBS NewsHour. Supreme Court Will Weigh Trump-Backed Republican Push to Revive Arizona Voting Laws
24
ACLU of Arizona. Know Your Rights Under Proposition 314
25
Arizona Attorney General. Press Releases
26
PBS NewsHour. Why Colorado River Negotiations Stalled and How They Could Restart
27
Arizona Attorney General. Attorney General Mayes Civil Rights Division Recovers Over $2 Million
28
Senator Gallego. Senate Passes Gallego-Backed Bipartisan Housing Package
29
Tucson.com. Kari Lake Nominated as Ambassador to Jamaica