…And then there were three.
In mid-February, Republican Karrin Taylor Robson announced that she had suspended her campaign for Arizona governor, leaving just Republican Congressmen David Schweikert and Andy Biggs, along with Democratic incumbent Katie Hobbs, on the field. (“Suspended” simply means that campaign funds can still be accessed – even though it sounds like a candidate is keeping us in suspense that they might jump back in the race at any moment.)
By saying there are only three gubernatorial candidates left, I know I’m not being fair to third-party candidates, but I don’t have the space here to list them – except for Hugh Lytle. A former ASU quarterback who’s now a health-care entrepreneur, Lytle is worth mentioning because he’s a non-independent Independent. Which is to say, he’s running under the banner of the Independent Party – which used to be the No Labels Party. They went from being a political party with the label of No Labels, to a party of non-independent Independents.
I wonder if they’ll eventually be reborn as the Party-less Party.
Anyway, back to reality – specifically, the cold, hard reality that caused Robson to pack it in. Maybe it’s this: Though she was the first to receive President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the governor’s race, she wasn’t the last. That may have left her feeling like she was second fiddle after Biggs got his own Trump stamp o’ approval and got a thumbs-up from Turning Point USA. That has to leave a mark.
Or did Robson prognosticate a blue wave of independent voters taking an even dimmer view of Trump and Trump-aligned candidates this November?
My friend, pollster Mike Noble of Noble Predictive Insights – yes, he’s really my friend, and no, pollsters aren’t great at parties – told me in January one of the most notable shifts in Arizona voter opinion that he saw over the last year was “the erosion of President Trump’s job approval [numbers].” According to Noble’s numbers, Trump started 2025 with 50 percent of Arizona voters approving of his job performance, but the number “fell to 42 percent, while the share of those disapproving rose to 55 percent” by year’s end.
Not to suggest that Taylor Robson is a shark, but did she smell Republican blood in the water and decide to bail? Maybe it wasn’t GOP blood in general, but instead her own – because, though weakened, MAGA will still likely call the shots in the primary, and Biggs is clearly more MAGA than her.
’Tis a shame for Taylor Robson, because Hobbs is far from invincible.
She’s running for reelection in a state Trump won in by six points in 2024 and only holds office by virtue of the 17,117 votes that separated her from Kari Lake in 2022 (a mere 0.67 percent). And she has her own polling problems. In May of 2024, Noble polling showed 32 percent of Arizona voters held a negative view of Hobbs. By the end of 2025, that number had increased to 43 percent.
“Incumbents can survive middling approval numbers, but sustained growth in disapproval is harder to outrun,” Noble says.
The question is: Whose disapproval numbers are most likely to gallop in 2025? The governor’s? Or Trump’s – and those of any Arizona candidate riding him?
