Arizona Gov. Hobbs vetoes Charlie Kirk license plate bill

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed a
bill that would have created a specialty license plate in honor of
conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed while
speaking at a college campus in Utah last year. 

“Charlie Kirk’s assassination is tragic and a horrifying act of violence,” Hobbs wrote in her veto letter.
“In America, we resolve our political differences at the ballot box. No
matter who it targets, political violence puts us all in harm’s way and
damages our sacred democratic institutions.” 

For each person who chose the
speciality plate, a portion of the fees would have gone to the nonprofit
branch of Turning Point USA, the controversial right-wing organization
that Kirk founded in 2012.

When she vetoed Senate Bill 1439
on Friday, Hobbs agreed with previous comments from other Democrats
that specialty license plates issued by the state aren’t the place for
politics. 

“I will continue working toward
solutions that bring people together, but this bill falls short of that
standard by inserting politics into a function of government that should
remain nonpartisan,” she wrote.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican and founder of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, who worked closely with Kirk and whose companies have been paid millions of dollars by TPUSA.

But Hoffman vehemently denied that
his business relationships with Turning Point USA were connected to his
sponsorship of the bill, saying that he and Kirk became close personal
friends after they began working together more than a decade ago. 

Hoffman excoriated Hobbs for her veto decision in a text to the Arizona Mirror. 

“Katie Hobbs’ grotesque partisanship
knows no bounds,” he said. “Even in the wake of a global civil rights
leader — an Arizona resident and her own constituent — being
assassinated in broad daylight for his defense of the First Amendment,
Hobbs couldn’t find the human decency to put her far-Left extremism
aside simply to allow those how wish to honor him to do so. Katie Hobbs
will forever be known as a stain on the pages of Arizona’s story.”

Some Democratic opponents of the bill
argued that a wealthy, private organization didn’t need the
government’s help to collect donations.

Like other specialty license plates
in the Grand Canyon State, for every driver that paid $25 to get the
Kirk specialty plate, the far-right advocacy group would have gotten
$17.

TPUSA brought in $84 million in 2024, while Turning Point Action brought in more than $27 million. 

Democratic Rep. Patty Contreras
pointed out during a Jan. 28 House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee meeting that Republicans had been blocking Democrats from
creating a LGBTQ+ pride specialty plate for years. 

SB1439 is just one of the bills proposed by Republicans this year to honor Kirk. Hoffman also sponsored Senate Bill 1686,
which would allow statues of both Kirk and journalist Don Bolles to be
erected in Wesley Bolin Plaza, across from the Arizona Capitol. Bolles
was killed in a car bombing in 1976 related to his investigative
reporting work. 

SB1686 passed the Senate on March 4 by a vote of 16-14, with one Republican voting against it alongside Democrats. 

Another bill, sponsored by Senate President Warren Petersen, of Gilbert, would rename the Loop 202 “Charlie Kirk Loop 202.”

That bill passed along party lines in the Senate on Feb. 18, but hasn’t yet had a hearing in the House.