Katie Hobbs to Kick Off Term with Huge Party, But There's 1 Major Issue

By Ryan Ledendecker January 3, 2023 at 11:32am

Katie Hobbs is launching her new career as the governor of Arizona with an optics problem.

The Democrat, who defeated Republican opponent Kari Lake in November in a close contest, is holding a celebratory ball Saturday evening to mark the beginning of her term as the state’s top executive.

Given the state of the U.S. economy and the millions of Americans struggling with food and energy bills, the inaugural ball is a bad read of the room at the very least.

But the situation is even more off-putting because Hobbs doesn’t seem interested in revealing exactly how the event will be funded, the Arizona Daily Star reported Sunday. There’s absolutely no telling what corporations or special interests are footing the bill for what will undoubtedly be the swankiest political affair of the year in Arizona.

Oh, and it’s the first ball since former Gov. Fife Symington held one in the 1990s. The times were quite a bit different back then.

This is an especially bad look for Hobbs and her people, as she used “transparency” as a cornerstone of her bizarrely quiet campaign against Lake.

“I have always believed that government can be a force for good, and for too long, your state government has been working for the powerful, the partisan, and the special interests,” Hobbs’ campaign website reads.

In another section, it says, “We will make your government more transparent, because the people deserve to know what their leaders are doing with their money.”

Except, you know, in the case of decadent celebratory gubernatorial victory balls. “The people” apparently don’t need to know about such things.

Do you think Arizona voters were disenfranchised on Election Day?

“This is a private event not being paid for with public funds,'” Hobbs aide Murphy Hebert told the Daily Star.

Tickets for the inaugural ball were still available Tuesday on the governor’s website for $150 plus a fee of $11.47.

In addition to being weirdly secretive about who’s buying the balloons and caviar on Saturday, Hobbs also kicked off her term as Arizona governor with a secretive oath-taking ceremony on Monday. All media, except for one selected news photographer, were banned from covering what should be a public event.

A short video clip of her swearing-in ceremony posted to social media showed Hobbs having a tough time getting through the simplest phrases. At one point, she even blamed her own mother for her lack of ability to repeat common words.

VIDEO:

Democrat @KatieHobbs was unable to take the oath of office this morning without stammering and laughing through it. She also banned reporters from attending. #AZGov

MORE ➡️ https://t.co/bPGxYMFoKI pic.twitter.com/6bTCZ9KQ70

— Brian Anderson (@AZBrianAnderson) January 2, 2023

Good golly, no wonder she banned the press from attending. That was awkward.

Republican Arizona state Sen. Justine Wadsack slammed Hobbs for getting hung up on several occasions during her swearing-in ceremony, warning that this is what Arizonans have to deal with now.

“Hobbs had a hard time getting through the words at her ‘swearing-in,'” Wadsack tweeted. “Silent when it was time to recite back & stopping at ‘Defending the Constitution’. This is the precursor of what’s to come until the rightful Governor takes her seat.”

Remember, this is the same Katie Hobbs who somehow pulled off a Joe Biden-style, hide-from-the-public campaign.

She and her team went out of their way to ensure that she never stood on a debate stage with Lake, who would have shredded Hobbs within seconds.

Promising her constituents “transparency” while kicking off her inaugural term with a privately funded party and a closed-to-the-public swearing-in ceremony is, sadly, par for the course for today’s Democratic politicians. It’s difficult to expect much more.

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