News outlets are reporting that Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs is going to choose former Mesa Mayor John Giles as her running mate for lieutenant governor. Giles, an independent, used to be a Republican but shifted to the left over the years, including serving in a leadership role with Republicans for Kamala Harris.
Giles angered Republicans during his tenure as mayor of Mesa. Since then, conservative critics and local GOP officials have frequently accused him of essentially behaving like a Democrat.
He supported Hobbs and Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego over their Republican opponents. He appeared at events for Barack Obama. He was one of only 30 Republican mayors to publicly support Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
He spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2024, telling the audience he felt “more at home here than in today’s Republican Party.” He said the GOP had been “kidnapped by extremists and devolved into a cult … the cult of Donald Trump.” Giles, who refers to himself as a McCain Republican, told the convention, “John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, “and we don’t owe a d*** thing to what’s been left behind.” In 2017, he was caught on a hot mic calling Trump an “idiot.”