By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Arizona's two members of the Republican National Committee are calling for the ouster of Gina Swoboda, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party.
In an online post, Jake Hoffman and Liz Harris provide a list of what they call "serious misconduct that undermines the party and benefits Democrat electoral prospects.'' They want her to resign or be removed.
Swoboda, who was voted in her position in early 2024 and won reelection earlier this year, has been at odds with some of the more conservative members of the GOP for some time now.
For example, Swoboda, who has previously worked as an election official, drew criticism for explaining there is a legitimate reason it takes a number of days to count early ballots even as others within her party were claiming fraud.
But what appears to have stoked the new calls for her removal are comments she made saying that "guardrails'' are needed around the program that provides vouchers of state tax dollars for students to attend private and parochial schools as well as those who are home schooled.
And Hoffman and Harris are angry that Swoboda has not supported Trump in his decision to defund PBS -- particularly in light of new information about how KAET-TV, the Arizona affiliate, gave Katie Hobbs airtime even though the then-gubernatorial hopeful refused to debate Republican Kari Lake.
Swoboda, for her part, defends her actions. And she is lashing out at Hoffman who is a state senator from Queen Creek who also is one of 18 indicted by a state grand jury for being part of a 2020 "fake elector'' plan for Trump, and Harris who was a state representative from Chandler before being expelled from the House in 2023 for inviting witnesses to present false and libelous charges about lawmakers and other state officials and then lying about her involvement in the testimony.
"Hoffman and Harris are little more than low-rent grifters with sordid histories who want to destroy the Republican Party in Arizona,'' she told Capitol Media Services on Thursday. "Their pathetic self-aggrandizing attacks on Republicans are so common and predictable that they ceased to be taken seriously long ago.''
In some ways, the bid to remove Swoboda is just another manifestation of deep divisions in the state GOP, with Hoffman in particular seeking to oust some Republicans from office who he does not consider sufficiently conservative -- and sufficiently loyal to President Trump and his policies.
Earlier this year, Hoffman, who chairs the Arizona Freedom Caucus, recruited two GOP of the Arizona House to run against incumbent Republicans Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers on the Arizona Corporation Commission. With Hoffman at introducing them at a press conference, David Marshall and Ralph Heap, in turn, pledged support of the president's energy policy which relies more on fossil fuels and less on renewable resources.
He also introduced state Treasurer Kimberly Yee when, unable to seek a third term in that office, she deciding to challenge incumbent Republican Tom Horne for state schools chief.
Much of her campaign is based on Horne refusing to approve questionable use of voucher dollars by parents of home schooled children, items like a $5,000 Rolex watch, a $24,000 golf simulator, a $16,170 cello and even a vasectomy testing kit. She contends that Horne has no authority to second-guess what parents believe are educational expenses.
That issue of vouchers -- formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts -- also is part of what is behind the bid to get rid of Swoboda.
"Rather than defending the impeccable record of Arizona's nationally acclaimed universal school choice program, which results in only 0.01% of transactions being questionable, the party chair gave a gift horse to Democrats by accepting and amplifying the twisted narratives and false premises of a left wing activist journalist,'' Hoffman told Capitol Media Services.
And Democrats have, in fact, taken notice.
"We applaud the GOP chair for finally accepting what Democrats have known all along: the ESA program is out of control and bankrupting our state budget because of private luxury purchases on the taxpayers' dime,'' posted Arizona State Democrats on social media.
Swoboda, for her part, said she supports vouchers. But she said that the 2022 expansion of the program that makes it available to all students, regardless of need or special circumstances, also has resulted in "reports of potential misuse of funds.''
She said lawmakers -- including Republicans who back vouchers -- need to respond on what they are doing to address them.
"If we want the public to support the expansion moving forward, it is important to act as quickly as we can to put up guardrails,'' she said.
What has been happening is that Horne's office, with limited oversight staff, has been automatically approving purchases of less than $2,000, with an eye on trying to recover misspent funds from parents later. It is that list of expenses that Craig Harris, a reporter for KPNX-TV in Phoenix, has documented atuomatically approved expenses for two 1-carat diamond rights, gaming laptops, maternity wear, dog food, hotel and resort stays, and dozens of Lego sets, including 15 for more than $1,000 each.
What's needed right now, Swoboda said, are "risk limited audits'' to review parental expenditures until the Department of Education has the staff it needs.
What also has annoyed the two GOP lawmakers is the
fact that Swoboda has praised Harris for his reporting.
"Craig has done tremendous work and I'm grateful for it,'' she said in a separate interview with the station. But here, too, Swoboda said the reporting serves a public purpose -- and ultimately could help preserve the voucher program by providing impetus to fix it rather than endanger its existence.
Also on the complaint list by Harris and Hoffman is Swoboda's support of public television.
They accuse her of "commending taxpayer-funded outlets like PBS, even as President Trump fought to defund them due to their overt bias and misuse of public funds.''
And they more specifically say that Swoboda has failed to back Senate President Warren Petersen who has asked the FCC to revoke the license of KAET over the incident with Hobbs. Hoffman and Harris say there are "credible revelations that it used taxpayer dollars to assist Democrats and damage Republican candidate Kari Lake.''
What actually happened is that the two gubernatorial candidates had agreed to a debate sponsored by the Clean Elections Commission to be aired on KAET. But Hobbs later refused to debate Lake.
So instead, the station offered half-hour interviews to both. Hobbs accepted; Lake did not because she said that violated the agreement to debate.
Records obtained by the Arizona Republic show that various officials at Arizona State University, which owns the station, were involved in that decision to give Hobbs airtime anyway.
"President Petersen is correct to call out PBS viewpoint discrimination on a candidate they do not support,'' Swoboda said. "But eliminating public broadcasting isn't the answer.''
She said the station must tell Arizonans what they will do to prevent a repeat of what happened.
Swoboda said, however, there is a needed role for PBS what with consolidation of corporate media, cutbacks and news outlets shutting down, leaving only a few "powerful interests'' in the media.
"Public broadcasting is supposed to be a safeguard against that -- a place for non-editorialized statements of fact,'' she said.
Swoboda also gained the ire of some Republicans again this week when she said that Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes was correct in ruling that county recorders cannot remove long-registered voters from the rolls just because they may never have provided proof of citizenship because of a glitch in the records from the state's Motor Vehicle Division.
"If the recorders have affirmative proof that one of the voters is a non-citizen, they may initiatiave a notice and cancellation process,'' Swoboda said. "But they may not otherwise do so because of this error.''
Some things are working against any effort to oust Swoboda.
One is that she was elected state party chair in January 2024 with the endorsement of President Trump. She also had the endorsement of Lake who called her "a national leader in election reform.''
She won reelection earlier this year, defeating former state Rep. Cory McCarr who said he was asked to run by Hoffman and Harris.
Swoboda ran on the record of Republicans generally doing well in 2024 while she was in charge, with Trump winning Arizona -- he didn't do that in 2020 -- and Republicans picking up seats in the Legislature, though Lake lost her senate bid to Ruben Gallego.
That record of winning, she said, will help Republicans win back key statewide offices including governor, secretary of state and attorney general.
A former employee of the Secretary of State's Office under both Republican Michele Reagan and Democrat Hobbs, Swoboda also was the elections day director of operations in Arizona for Trump in 2020.
Just a month ago, House Speaker Steve Montenegro announced he was hiring her as a senior policy advisor for that chamber's Committee on Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections. She previously had worked in the state Senate as an election consultant, but her contract was not renewed.
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