their health and safety she said and thats what ill bring to the governors officen a video announcing her candidacy hobbs ticked off a series of accomplishments as a lawmaker and as secretary of state saying she wanted to work to make arizonans lives better she vowed to rebuild the state economy after covid19 invest in health care and education and ensure that all state residents have the same ability to get aheadalthough arizona has for been ruled by republicans for more than a decade democrats made inroads in the last two elections and bidens presidential win was the first since bill clinton took arizona in 1996the states most recent democratic governor was janet napolitano who was elected in 2002 and again in 2006 before leaving in early 2009 after thenpresident barack obama appointed her as homeland security secretaryhobbs was a member of the state house and senate for six years and served as minority leader of the senate for two years before running for her current office in 2018 she was trailing on election night but won her current post by less than 1 of the voteterm limits bar current republican gov doug ducey from running again in 2022the only other democrat in the race so far is marco lopez a former mayor of the border city of nogales who rose rapidly to a senior position in president barack obamas administration he joined the race in march kicking off his campaign with videos in english and spanish that highlight his nogales arizona roots and described an arizona he said was held back by duceys leadership failuresmy message is very simple if we have healthy families good education and quality jobs arizona thrives lopez said at the time sadly thats not the case for many many families in the state todaythe son of mexican immigrants lopez returned to nogales after college and was elected mayor at age 22 he went on to serve napolitano as head of the crossborder nonprofit arizonamexico commission that promotes economic prosperity and led the arizona department of commerceon the republican side state treasurer kimberly yee and developer karrin taylor robson announced plans last month to seek the republican nomination former phoenix television news anchor kari lake entered the gop race on tuesday