Katie Hobbs gets backing of Republicans in Paradise Valley as Trump rallies followers in Mesa

Democratic candidate for governor Katie Hobbs held a news conference Sunday morning at Barry Goldwater Memorial Park in Paradise Valley to emphasize that Republicans should support her over rival Kari Lake.

Several members of Hobbs’ “Republicans for Katie Hobbs Coalition” gathered with her at the park, which celebrates the state’s conservative icon who died in 1998 following five terms as a U.S. senator.

Karie Dozer, a former spokesman for the late state Attorney General Grant Woods, said Goldwater would be “shaking his head in disgust” at how “crazy” Republican politics have become.

Kari Lake is “dangerous for Arizona,” said Mesa Mayor John Giles, and that’s why he — a Republican — was at the park with Hobbs and not at Trump’s rally in the city he leads Sunday.

“Those of us who support Secretary Hobbs care very deeply about the future of Arizona,” he said. “And that’s why we are putting our state above our party.”

November’s election isn't between Republicans and Democrats, but “a choice between sanity and chaos,” he added.

Monica Villalobos, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, describing herself as a former Republican, emphasized that the nation has “moved forward” under Biden.

She didn’t leave the party, she said — it left her when it began running “candidates operating from places of hatred, hubris and hostility rather than honesty, humility and humanity.”

Hobbs, repeating Giles’ statement about “sanity” and “chaos,” said the problem isn’t just that Lake “proudly accepts support from Nazis and spews dang conspiracy theories, it’s what she would actually do as governor.”

Hobbs then ran down a litany of Lake’s positions, including her support for a territorial-era anti-abortion law, baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and surveillance cameras in public-school classrooms.

Lake’s entire platform “boils down into being a sore loser,” she said.

Other Republicans at the event included former Scottsdale Mayor Sam Campana and former state legislator Steve May.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 480-276-3237. Follow him on Twitter @raystern.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona governor's race: Katie Hobbs holds event with GOP supporters