EXCLUSIVE: Campaign Money, Investigations, Agency Failures — and the Questions That Follow Katie Hobbs into the 2026 Election

Campaign Money, Investigations, Agency Failures — and the Questions That Follow Katie Hobbs into the 2026 Election

THE “HAVE IT YOUR WAY” RECORD COMES DUE

THE THREE MUSKETEERS: THE KATIE HOBBS FILE – PART 3

SECTION 1. THE INVESTIGATION COMES HOME

For two years, Katie Hobbs had insisted she was not involved.  Now the investigators wanted to ask her themselves.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes opened an investigation in June 2024 into allegations surrounding Sunshine Residential Homes, a foster-care provider whose political contributions and state reimbursement increases had become impossible to ignore.

By August 2026, Mayes said the investigation was nearing its end.

Hobbs said she was looking forward to the conclusion.  However, there was just one unresolved detail:  Would the Governor actually sit down and answer the investigator’s questions?

Mayes had requested an interview months earlier. Hobbs’s office said it remained in communication with the Attorney General. But when asked directly whether she would submit to questioning, Hobbs would not commit.

The Governor still continued to deny influencing the Department of Child Safety’s decision to increase reimbursement rates just for Sunshine Residential.

Mayes offered a different kind of reassurance:

“You cannot blow off the Attorney General’s Office. Full stop. No one can.”

The investigation began with campaign money and a state contract.  It was ending in the middle of a reelection campaign.  And suddenly, the questions Katie Hobbs had spent two years answering from reporters were no longer merely political…

They were investigative.

SECTION 2: FOLLOW THE MONEY

Investigations need a question.  This one had a timeline.

Sunshine Residential Homes operates group homes for children in Arizona’s foster-care system. In late 2022, the company sought a higher reimbursement rate from the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

The request was denied…Then the political money began attracting attention.

Shortly after Katie Hobbs won the 2022 election, she reportedly personally called Sunshine owner Simon Kottoor and asked him to become a gold-level sponsor of her inauguration. Sunshine subsequently contributed $100,000 to Hobbs’s 2023 inaugural fund, making it the fund’s second-largest disclosed contributor.

Sunshine also contributed $300,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party — $200,000 before the 2022 election and another $100,000 in 2023.

Political contributions are legal.

So are requests for higher government reimbursement rates.

The questions began when the two timelines crossed.

In May 2023, DCS approved an increase in Sunshine’s standard reimbursement rate from approximately $140 per bed per day to $195. A later contract increased the rate again — to $234 per bed.

DCS offered an explanation…

Sunshine had warned that without higher state payments it might shift beds to a federal program housing immigrant children, where reimbursement was greater. DCS officials said losing those beds would make it harder to place Arizona foster children, particularly siblings who needed to remain together.

That explanation deserves to be included.  So does another fact:

Sunshine was the only group-home provider to receive an extraordinary rate increase outside the normal contract-renewal process during that period. Other providers later received increases during routine negotiations.

None of that proves Katie Hobbs ordered the increase.  In fact, Hobbs has repeatedly denied knowing about or participating in the decision. 

“I did not even know these decisions were being made at the time that they were made,” Hobbs said.

Then DCS Director David Lujan likewise said he made the decision based on the needs of the agency and Arizona’s foster children.  But Lujan acknowledged something else.

Sunshine’s political support for Hobbs made the decision uncomfortable because, regardless of the reason for approving the increase, campaign contributions were bound to raise suspicions.

They did.

By June 2024, Attorney General Kris Mayes had opened an investigation into reimbursement increases from $140 to $195 — and eventually $234; Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell also began examining the matter, with legislative investigators later joining the scrutiny.

Republican lawmakers called the allegations “pay-to-play.”  Mayes did not declare that conclusion was proven.

She opened an investigation to determine whether it was.

Meanwhile, legislators tried another approach with a Bill to require companies seeking state contracts to disclose political contributions made to the Governor, her campaign organizations, inaugural funds, and related political entities.

Predictably, Hobbs vetoed the proposal.

In June 2026, she called the disclosure requirement a “political stunt,” arguing that genuine transparency rules should apply broadly to elected officials rather than singling out the Governor.

While her argument can be debated…The timing cannot.

The Governor was vetoing a contractor-disclosure measure inspired by the Sunshine controversy while investigators were still investigating the Sunshine controversy.

There was still no public finding that Katie Hobbs traded government action for political contributions.

But by 2026, Arizona had considerably more than a partisan accusation:

• It had $100,000 in inaugural contributions and $300,000 in contributions to the Arizona Democratic Party.
• It had a previously rejected rate request.
• It had reimbursement increases from $140 to $195 — and eventually $234.
• It had government records.
• It had multiple investigations.

And it had a Governor insisting that she knew nothing about the decision.

The money did not prove a crime.

It did guarantee that someone eventually had to explain the timeline.

And by the summer of 2026, investigators wanted that explanation directly from Katie Hobbs.

SECTION 3. THE GOVERNOR’S DEFENSE

Katie Hobbs has an answer for the Sunshine controversy – She did not make the decision.

Asked about the Department of Child Safety’s rate increases, Hobbs said plainly:

“I did not even know these decisions were being made at the time that they were made.”

Former DCS Director David Lujan has said the decision was his.  He maintained that Sunshine’s beds were important to Arizona foster children and that the possibility of losing them to higher-paying federal placements created a genuine operational problem.

That explanation cannot simply be brushed aside because it is inconvenient to critics.  Neither can the political money.

Hobbs insists she did not influence the contract decision. Her administration has repeatedly predicted that the investigations will clear her.

By August 2026, however, the Governor had another problem.

She said she wanted the investigation finished.

But **she still would not commit to sitting down for an interview with Mayes’s investigators**

Four months earlier, Mayes had asked the Governor to answer questions. Hobbs’s spokesman said the Governor’s Office remained in contact with the Attorney General and was looking forward to the investigation wrapping up.

When reporters asked Mayes whether Hobbs could simply decline to participate, Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General supplied one of the more memorable lines of the entire affair:

“You cannot blow off the attorney general’s office. Full stop. No one can.”

Mayes also made something else clear: **the investigation would move forward with or without Hobbs’s interview.**

That does not establish wrongdoing.  A governor is entitled to deny accusations. Investigators are obligated to determine whether evidence supports them. And until findings are released, allegations remain allegations.  But there is an unavoidable political irony.

Katie Hobbs spent much of her first term insisting that Arizona needed transparency, accountability, and public confidence in government.

Now Arizona’s Attorney General wanted answers from Katie Hobbs.

And the Governor’s answer about answering was considerably less transparent:

She wanted the investigation over.  

She just would not say whether she intended to sit down and help finish it.

By the summer of 2026, however, Hobbs had another problem besides investigators.

SHE HAD VOTERS!

And she needed to convince them that four more years should look different from the four they had just watched.

That required a reelection strategy.

 And apparently, it also required a Republican in Name Only (RINO).

SECTION 4. THE REELECTION STRATEGY

By 2026, Katie Hobbs had a different challenge.  She no longer had to convince Arizona voters what she might do as Governor.  They had four years of evidence.

The vetoes. The appointments. The agency controversies. The contracts. The investigations.

And now she needed a reelection campaign capable of reaching beyond Democrats.

Enter John Giles. 

John Giles built his political career as a Republican mayor of Mesa.  But his recent political résumé appears to have missed the campaign memo…

• Giles endorsed Joe Biden in 2020.
• In 2022, he supported Katie Hobbs for Governor and Democrat Mark Kelly for U.S. Senate.
• By 2024, the Republican mayor was supporting Kamala Harris for President and even spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
• In Mid-May of 2026 he resigned from the Republican Party!

At some point, calling that “crossing the aisle” begins to require a very wide aisle.

But politically, the choice still made sense.

Hobbs had won the Governor’s Office narrowly in 2022, helped by independents and Republicans unwilling to support her opponent. A running mate with ex-Republican credentials could help her make essentially the same argument in 2026:

And because Kari Lake was seen by Republicans as not performing well among Independent voters, Hobbs was sure to bring on a running mate to cover them.

You may not be a Democrat. You just do not have to be that kind of Republican.

Giles offered Hobbs something her own political résumé could not manufacture — a familiar Republican name to place beside hers, even if he was a former RINO!

Whether Arizona voters see that as bipartisanship or “deceptive” political repackaging will be their decision.

Again, there is nothing improper about supporting candidates from another party. Giles has explained his choices publicly and has been particularly outspoken in his opposition to Donald Trump and the direction of the Republican Party.

However, there is something undeniably unusual about the political journey here.

A longtime, former Republican mayor who supported Biden:

Then Hobbs.

Then Kelly.

Then Harris.

Then Resigned as a Republican.

And now Katie Hobbs again — this time from inside the ticket.

Arizona politics had officially reached the point where the party labels might need name tags.

For Hobbs, however, the Diversionary Strategy was Serious.

She was attempting to make the 2026 election about the 2022 Race – not simply about Her Questionable Record.  Because after four years in office, there was a great deal of record to discuss.

And that brings us back to where this three-part story began.

 Katie Hobbs had Climbed the Ladder.

Now Arizona voters had to decide what she had done after reaching the top.

 SECTION 5. THE RECORD COMES DUE

Political campaigns are built on PROMISES.

Reelection campaigns are built on RECORDS.

And Hobbs no longer has to ask Arizona voters to imagine what kind of Governor she might become.

They have watched her become one: The Vetoes. The Appointment Battles. The Agency Controversies. The Contracts. The Political Money. The Investigations.

Hobbs maintains that she did nothing improper and that many of the accusations against her are politically motivated.

Some of those defenses may ultimately prove correct.

That is what investigations are supposed to determine.

But elections ask a different question.

Voters are not jurors deciding whether a crime occurred.

They have to decide whether a Governor’s judgment, leadership, transparency and record have earned another four years.

That is the bill now coming due.

Three articles ago, this story began with an unlikely climb — from Burger King to the Legislature, Secretary of State, and finally the Governor’s Office.

Katie Hobbs made it to the top. Once she reached the top, the questions changed.

Now Arizona gets to decide what she did once she got there…

Katie Hobbs does not need another Biography.

She has a RECORD.

And what did she do once Arizona handed her the keys?

That answer is written across four years of public records, vetoes, appointments, agency decisions, political contributions, investigations — and one very determined reelection campaign.

There is One Last Irony here.  At Burger King, the customer was famously told:

HAVE IT YOUR WAY!

For four years, Katie Hobbs has Had it Her Way

Now the Customer (Voter) is Back…

And this time, Arizonans get to Have It “Their Way!”

 By Linda Brickman

©2026 Linda Brickman. All Rights Reserved.