Key Points:
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Two clear gubernatorial frontrunners lead the way in Arizona ahead of the 2026 elections
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Both were endorsed by President Donald Trump
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Each has one year to convince voters that they can beat Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs
With 365 days until Arizona’s 2026 primary elections, the Republican gubernatorial primary field has two clear candidates vying to prove their conservative chops.
After losing the governor’s office to a Democrat for the first time since 2006 with the election of Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022, Arizona Republicans are hoping to wrest the state back into their control next year. Two frontrunners to replace Hobbs emerged early in 2025: businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson and U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona.
A dual endorsement from President Donald Trump, shifting policy stances and the influence of conservative group Turning Point USA stand to complicate the race for both candidates. But their campaigns are eager to prevent 2026 from being a repeat of 2022.
While a year feels far away for many, Arizona’s political community knows it will pass in the blink of an eye for those who are unprepared.
“You want to start kicking for the finish line of the Republican primary in January,” said Chuck Coughlin, the CEO of HighGround Public Affairs.
The Robson campaign
In 2022, Robson painted herself as a moderate alternative to Trump-endorsed, MAGA darling Kari Lake. Despite efforts to distance herself from President Trump in the aftermath of her former primary loss, Robson began to make a swing back toward the right while Trump campaigned for his second term.
That earned her the first endorsement from the president in the race in December 2024, a shock to many considering that Robson hadn’t even formally announced a run for governor. She accepted the endorsement and ran with it when she launched her bid earlier this year.
“Since she launched in mid-February, Karrin has done over 150 events across Arizona, had the largest and earliest media buy in AZ gubernatorial campaign history, and has raised over $1.6 million, lapping the GOP field,” campaign spokesman Jeff Glassburner said in a statement.
Despite all of that, some consultants and party insiders still see Robson as a candidate who can win the general election but not the primary. Fellow Republicans have already criticized her for her background as a lobbyist, her support of a state proposition that gave in-state tuition to undocumented students graduating from Arizona high schools, and her work on behalf of candidates who challenged Trump in 2024.
Tyler Montague, a Republican consultant, said there are areas of tension within GOP circles that Robson could exploit. One is the Trump administration’s handling of Department of Justice files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Robson, or the external groups supporting Robson, are likely to use this to break up some of the big support,” Montague said. “A lot of the Republican base wants to release these files.”
Whether or not Robson still has the support of the moderate wing of the Republican Party has, however, come into question. Democrats noted last week that Robson has been supportive of cuts to Medicaid while former Gov. Jan Brewer, who co-chaired Robson’s first campaign, has advocated against them.
Coughlin, who served as Brewer’s political consultant when she was in office, said he hadn’t heard firsthand whether the former governor was considering dropping Robson, but said it seemed unlikely.
“I very rarely see Jan back away from something that she’d previously done,” Coughlin said.
Robson did lose the backing of several Trump aides who were advising her campaign earlier this year, including the president’s former campaign manager Chris LaCivita. Now, her campaign is being led by Parker Carey, with her 2022 campaign manager Glassburner returning as an adviser.
However, the Robson campaign has a significant fundraising advantage. She outraised Biggs in the first two quarters of 2025 by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and she can self-fund her campaign, already spending $2.2 million of her own money this year.
Barrett Marson, a Republican public relations consultant, said Robson’s ability to contribute to her campaign should not be overlooked.
“Both candidates have the Trump endorsement, but only one candidate has money to trumpet that endorsement,” Marson said.
The Biggs campaign
Biggs, the longtime congressman from a deep red district, entered the race in March and quickly snagged his own nod from Trump. The endorsement was nearly a given, due to his unwavering support of the president through his first term, his 2020 loss and his 2024 comeback.
“Congressman Andy Biggs enters August as the clear favorite in the GOP Primary Election and stands well-positioned as the strongest candidate to defeat Katie Hobbs in November 2026,” said spokesman Drew Sexton in a statement. “He’s the only candidate to be endorsed by President Donald J. Trump and Charlie Kirk, the only candidate with an impeccable conservative voting record, and the only candidate with the governing experience at the state and federal level to provide strong leadership for Arizona from Day One.”
However, neither Trump’s nor Kirk’s endorsement seemed to have boosted Biggs’ campaign fundraising. In the first two quarters of 2025, his campaign has only raised around $660,000.
Many have attributed the low numbers to Biggs’ inexperience running in competitive, statewide races. Prior to running in Arizona’s Congressional District 5, a Republican stronghold, Biggs represented the same area in the state Legislature.
What he lacks in fundraising has been made up in independent expenditures, however. Turning Point’s political action committee spent nearly $500,000 on Biggs’ behalf in the second quarter of 2025, which included footing the bill for an over $300,000 TV ad buy.
Biggs is also getting support from former Trump staffers. His team includes Pat Aquilina as campaign manager and Sexton as senior adviser, both of whom served as Arizona state director for the Trump campaigns in 2024 and 2020, respectively.
But Republicans who are not fans of Biggs are already pulling skeletons out of his closet, including past votes from the Legislature, his opposition to bipartisan bills in Congress and his support for election conspiracy theories.
“One (candidate) has a record and one somewhat of a blank slate,” Marson said. “As we all know, someone who has a blank slate can create their own narrative. Biggs has a record, and some of that is good and some of that isn’t.”
Montague pointed out Biggs’ “no” votes on issues like releasing the Epstein files, the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and several anti-human trafficking bills. He said that those votes, combined with his hardline conservative stances, will make it hard for Biggs to court moderate Republican voters.
Avoiding the “Kari Lake problem”
With both candidates looking to avoid a repeat of 2022’s losses for Republicans, their campaigns seem to recognize a need to shift away from Lake’s brash, attention-grabbing and unsuccessful gubernatorial bid.
Republican consultants agree that neither Biggs nor Robson has the personalities to run a campaign like Lake’s. But there are other areas the two need to stay away from if they hope to unseat Hobbs in the general election and avoid the “Kari Lake problem,” as Montague calls it.
“Kari Lake never quit running in a primary,” Montague said. “She just kept going on with that strategy and she was so bombastic, so committed to election fraud conspiracies that multiple polls showed she alienated people who know better.”
Coughlin said Lake’s campaign also alienated her from other elected officials, which proved to be an unsuccessful strategy.
“She was bigger than anybody else, at least that’s what she was playing to be,” Coughlin said. “She wasn’t part of a team, and that narrative led her to be isolated in a way that really damaged her ability to market herself during a general election.”
Montague said he thinks both candidates are running too far to the right to be successful in a general election, especially if an association with the Trump administration becomes toxic in 2026.
“To win the primary, they’re both having to brand themselves in a way that hurts them in the general,” Montague said.
But to many others, on both sides of the aisle, both the primary and the general are still anyone’s game.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
