The Katie Hobbs campaign is off to a rough start. It’s been a week of damaging headlines for Hobbs, who’s implicated in a whopping $2.75 million racial discrimination verdict from firing staffer Talonya Adams.
Now, African American leaders are blasting Hobbs and even Arizona Democrats are questioning if her candidacy will make it to Election Day. And the Hobbs campaign is refusing to comment.
Bottom Line: Katie Hobbs wants to lead Arizona but can’t be bothered to comment on troubling allegations that she participated in racial discrimination. Arizonans deserve answers.
Black Leaders blast Katie Hobbs after verdict in Arizona Senate discrimination case
Stacey Barchenger
November 15, 2021
Six prominent Black leaders are urging Arizonans to "reconsider" supporting Katie Hobbs' campaign for governor, saying they are deeply concerned about Hobbs' role in firing a Senate employee who has now twice won a discrimination case over the termination.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure Katie Hobbs is not successful,” said Cloves Campbell, a former state representative and publisher of the Arizona Informant, the only African American-owned weekly newspaper in the state.
Hobbs has been considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for governor, thanks to her role as Secretary of State and a national profile built by defending the 2020 election in Arizona.
But the criticism from Black community leaders deals a blow to her campaign ahead of the August 2022 primary election. Her Democratic opponents, former state Rep. Aaron Lieberman of Paradise Valley and former Obama administration official Marco Lopez, have already seized on the discrimination case to question Hobbs' ability to lead the state as governor.
The political and religious leaders issued a statement Friday just two days after a federal jury awarded Senate Democratic aide Talonya Adams, a Black woman, $2.75 million in damages.
The jury found Adams, who represented herself at trial, was discriminated against on the job and retaliated against when she was fired in 2015. At the time, Hobbs was the Democratic leader in the Senate, and she has testified that she participated in the discussion to fire Adams.
Hobbs apologized to Adams in 2019, but after trial last week, issued a statement through a spokesperson blaming the majority Republicans as the ultimate decisionmakers on staffing. That waffling has drawn criticism from Adams herself and now, some of the state's most prominent leaders of color.
"We ask that all persons, especially people of color, reconsider any support for Katie Hobbs to become the next governor of Arizona, as a direct consequence of her unjust actions toward attorney Adams, and refusal to neither admit discrimination occurred, nor take responsibility for her role in the retaliatory termination," a statement dated Nov. 12 and signed by Campbell and others reads.
The statement which was first reported by Phoenix's 12News, is from Campbell; NAACP state President Charles Fanniel; former lawmaker Art Hamilton, who battled former Gov. Evan Mecham to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a state holiday; former Phoenix City Council member Michael Johnson; former lawmaker and Arizona Corporation Commissioner Sandra Kennedy; and the Rev. Warren Stewart Sr. of the First Institutional Baptist Church of Phoenix.
Hobbs' campaign spokesperson, Jennah Rivera, did not return The Arizona Republic's call Monday seeking comment.
