By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Arizonans won't be driving on the Charlie Kirk Loop 202 -- at least not now.
Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday vetoed legislation crafted by Senate President Warren Petersen to rename the 78-mile freeway in Maricopa County after the slain controversial leader of Turning Point USA. The governor said that the proposal by the Gilbert Republican, approved by a party-line vote, is flawed because it is "inserting politics into a function of government that should remain nonpartisan.''
The veto drew an angry reaction, with Petersen saying that it was Hobbs who is acting political.
"She broke with a long-standing Arizona tradition of recognizing impact over politics,'' said the Senate president. And he said that Kirk deserved the honor, saying that he, who headquartered TPUSA and its affiliates in of Arizona, "built something that reached far beyond Arizona, and he brought that energy right here to our state.''
Petersen said that nonpartisan precedent was set in 2019 when the last 22-mile stretch of the Loop 202 was named for former Congressman Ed Pastor, a Democrat, who had died the year before. He had been the state's first Mexican-American member of Congress.
"Arizona has never required political agreement to recognize someone's contribution to public life,'' Petersen wrote in a prepared statement.
"We've recognized impact, service, and people who've shaped conversations and encouraged others to participate,'' he said. "This veto makes it clear that standard has changed.
But the decision to name that stretch of freeway for Pastor actually had been approved by the Arizona State Board of Geographic and Historic Names, an agency set up under state law to evaluate requests to designate -- and name -- roads that are of historic or geographic significance. Petersen's legislation, however, was written to bypass the board, mandating the designation in state law as well as directing the state Department of Transportation to erect "a reasonable amount of signage throughout Loop 202 that includes the new designation.''
That difference did not escape the governor.
"Any renaming of a highway must follow the current process through the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names and not be circumvented by the legislature,'' Hobbs wrote.
Petersen did not respond to a query about the decision of GOP lawmakers to bypass the board and act on their own.
The governor's action was not a surprise.
It comes exactly three weeks after she nixed legislation that would have allowed creation of a state license plate, with Kirk's image, to raise money for the organization, set up as a charity, which is now run by his widow, Erika.
But that veto, in its own way, was a departure for Hobbs. She had given her approval to every other legislatively approved request for a special license plate.
Those plates are particularly attractive to charities. It provides a way for people who support an organization or its goals to advertise it publicly.
Potentially more significant, $17 of the extra $25 annual registration fee goes to the organization.
In her veto, Hobbs made no mention of Kirk's record of controversial comments, ranging from criticism of gay and transgender rights and comparing abortion to the Holocaust to his calling the approval of the 1964 Civil Rights Act a "mistake'' that he said had been turned into "an anti-white weapon.''
Instead, the governor, facing reelection, chose to use the opportunity to condemn Kirk's assassination last year while speaking to college students at Utah Valley University as a "tragic and horrifying act of violence.''
"In America, we resolve our political differences at the ballot box,'' she wrote.
In a separate statement, Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community, said that Hobbs "made the right decision.''
He said that the Loop 202 freeway, while adjacent to the reservation, runs through South Mountain which he called "a place of deep cultural, spiritual and historic significance to our people.''
"Mr. Kirk's public statements about Native peoples, tribal sovereignty, and our connection to our ancestral lands were deeply offensive,'' Lewis wrote.
"They dismissed our identity and centuries of our history,'' he said. "To associate his name with this corridor would have compounded the harm.''
Lewis did not provide specifics.
But Kirk, in one of his broadcasts, said that Europeans "came to a very violent country.'' He also said that, for the most part, "there was nothing here,'' criticizing any moves to acknowledge that the land that was settled had previously belonged to someone else.
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