Hobbs Picks Ex-GOP Mayor John Giles as Running Mate

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, has selected John Giles, a former Republican mayor of Mesa, as her running mate for lieutenant governor in her re-election bid this November.

Hobbs announced the pick Tuesday in a joint video with Giles, who served as Mesa's mayor from 2014 to 2025. This is the first Arizona election in which voters will choose a governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket, following a 2022 ballot measure that created the position.

"Now, for the first time in our state's history, we are electing a governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket. And the first thing I looked for in a running mate was someone who shares that value of putting Arizonans ahead of partisan politics," Hobbs said.

Giles changed his party registration to independent in May and voted in the Democratic primary last month, according to Hobbs' communications director, Michael Beyer. "I was a lifelong Republican before becoming an independent because extremists shouldn't stand in the way of getting things done," Giles said.

While mayor of Mesa, Giles endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year, criticizing his former party. "The Grand Old Party has been kidnapped by extremists and devolved into a cult — the cult of Donald Trump," he said at the time.

Hobbs faces Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, a former House Freedom Caucus chairman who has selected former state lawmaker Sine Kerr as his running mate. Biggs won last month's GOP primary over Rep. David Schweikert and two businessmen.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as leaning Democratic in the battleground state, which Trump carried in 2016 and 2024 and Joe Biden won in 2020. In 2022, Hobbs narrowly defeated Republican Kari Lake by less than a percentage point.

Hobbs has recently built a coalition of Republican and independent supporters, including Giles and more than 50 other business and civic leaders, and has touted her record of signing more than 900 bipartisan bills, expanding affordable housing, and repealing the state's 1864 near-total abortion ban.