By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Gov. Katie Hobbs said Thursday that elected leaders need to focus on "turning down the rhetoric.''
"As elected leaders, we have a responsibility to set the tone,'' the governor told reporters at a political event that was scheduled before Wednesday's shooting death of Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah. "We should all focus on how we are shaping the political discourse.''
The governor herself, however, has repeatedly used the terms "extremist'' and "dangerous'' when referring to Republicans who do not support her agenda.
And it's nothing new.
During an interview during her 2022 election campaign, she called out Kari Lake, her GOP foes "dangerous and too extreme.''
Last year she railed against "Republican extremists in the House'' when they voted against repealing a territorial-era law that had outlawed virtually all abortions.
And during this year's legislative session she called out what she said were a few "extreme Republican lawmakers'' who were holding up a measure to fund services for Arizonans with disabilities.
"Every elected leader needs to focus on our role in toning down, or even shaping, the political discourse and how we can come together to reject this kind of extremist political violence that we're seeing,'' Hobbs said Wednesday when asked in the wake of Kirk's shooting if she was part of the problem. "And this is a terrible, terrible reminder of that.''
But the governor wouldn't answer the question of whether she will stop using the word "extremist'' when talking about Republicans.
"I'm not pointing fingers right now,'' Hobbs responded. "This is a very sad time and we need to focus on working together.''
Hobbs is certainly not alone in using heated rhetoric.
President Trump, in a video message hours after the shooting, blamed it on the "radial left'' despite the fact that an assailant had not been identified, much less a motive.
And Hobbs herself has been the target of such verbiage.
Senate President Warren Petersen has said she is trying "to force unlawful and extreme agendas on our citizens.''
And Sen. Jake Hoffman, who has battled and help kill the governor's choices to head state agencies, has spoken of and her "extreme agenda'' and her being a part of the "radical left.'' He also called Hobbs an "extremist'' in social media posts and decried "extremist Democrats in Arizona'' for renting a mobile billboard ahead of the 2024 election pointing out he was one of 11 "fake electors'' indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy in the 2020 election.
Hoffman told Capitol Media Services that calling Democrats "extreme'' is justified.
``Providing sexually explicit materials to children as young as kindergarteners is objectively extreme,'' he said. Ditto allowing biological men into women's bathrooms, allowing sex change surgery on minors, and ``weaponizing government against political opponents, championing mass censorship, and creating a two-tiered justice system.''
Hoffman said these are ``cornerstone Democrat policy positions'' and that calling them extreme ``isn't 'heated rhetoric,' it's truth.''
Petersen did not returned a message seeking comment on Thursday.
Others, including several current Republican legislators, have called Hobbs a "radical leftist.''
But it was the governor who chose less than 24 hours after the shooting to make remarks to the media about Kirk, the shooting -- and political rhetoric.
"Political violence has no place in American democracy,'' she said. "And we have to stand together in rejecting that.''
The governor said that she focuses on "how we can work together and come together and solve the tough issues.''
Thursday's event was clearly partisan, designed to focus on provisions Hobbs and fellow Democrats insisted on putting in the budget to provide funds for things like additional food stamps for those who buy fresh produce and free school lunches for all eligible children.
"It was Democrats fighting for that,'' she said.
But Hobbs acknowledged that Republicans, who control both the House and Senate, also had a role in what was in the final budget.
"It was all of us working together, addressing the needs of Arizonans,'' the governor said
"And when we can focus on that, we get the politics out and we can have civil dialog and we can actually work toward solutions,'' she said. "And we need more of that.''
Hobbs said she tries to "work across the aisle.''
"I try to leave attacks out of that,'' she said.
"Certainly, we can all do better at that,'' the governor continued, referring to Wednesday's shooting. "Certainly, this is a call to do that.''
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