In submitting her updated budget proposal in March, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs lamented the rising costs of the state’s school vouchers program that directs public dollars to pay private school tuition.

Characterizing vouchers as an “,” Hobbs said the state could spend more than $1 billion subsidizing private education in the upcoming fiscal year. The Democratic governor said those expenses could crowd out other budget priorities, including disability programs and pay raises for firefighters and state troopers.

It’s a dilemma that some budget experts fear will become more common nationwide as the costs of school choice measures mount across the states, reaching billions of dollars each year.

“School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don’t think is sustainable long term,” said Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Vouchers and scholarship programs, which use taxpayer money to cover private school tuition, are part of the wider school choice movement that also includes charter schools and other alternatives to public schools.

Opponents have long warned about vouchers draining resources from public education as students move from public schools to private ones. But research into several programs has shown many voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools. That means universal vouchers could drive up costs by creating two parallel education systems — both funded by taxpayers.

In Arizona, state officials reported most private school students receiving vouchers in the first two years of the expanded program were not previously enrolled in public schools. In fiscal year 2024, more than half the state’s 75,000 voucher recipients were previously enrolled in private schools or were being homeschooled.

“Vouchers don’t shift costs — they add costs,” Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who studies the issue, recently told Stateline. “Most voucher recipients were already in private schools, meaning states are paying for education they previously didn’t have to fund.”

Voucher proponents, though, say those figures . Arizona, like other states with recent expansions, previously had more modest voucher programs. So some kids who were already enrolled in private schools could have already been receiving state subsidies.

In addition to increasing competition, supporters say the programs can actually save taxpayer dollars by delivering education at a lower overall cost than traditional public schools.

One thing is certain: With a record number of students receiving subsidies to attend private schools, vouchers are quickly creating budget concerns for some state leaders.

The rising costs of school choice measures come after years of deep cuts to income taxes in many states, leaving them with less money to spend. An end of pandemic-era aid and potential looming cuts to federal support also have created widespread uncertainty about state budgets.

“We’re seeing a number of things that are creating a sort of perfect storm from a fiscal perspective in the states,” said Tucker, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Last year, Arizona leaders waded through an estimated $1.3 billion budget shortfall. Budget experts said the voucher program was responsible for of that deficit.

A new universal voucher program in Texas is expected to cost $1 billion over its next two-year budget cycle — a figure that could balloon to nearly $5 billion by 2030, according to a legislative fiscal note.

Earlier this year, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill expanding the state’s voucher program. But last week, he acknowledged his own “substantial concerns” about the state’s ability to fund vouchers and its public education obligations under the constitution.

“I think the legislature’s got a very tall task to understand how they’re going to be able to fund all of these things,” he in an interview with WyoFile.

Voucher proponents, who have been active at the state level for years, are gaining new momentum with support from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

In January, federal agencies to allow states, tribes and military families to access federal money for private K-12 education through education savings accounts, voucher programs or tax credits.

Last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted in favor of making available over the next four years for a federal school voucher program. Part of broader work on a bill to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the measure would need a simple majority in the House and the Senate to pass.

Martin Lueken, the director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for school choice measures, argues can actually deliver savings to taxpayers.

Lueken said vouchers are not to blame for state budget woes. He said public school systems for years have increased spending faster than inflation. And he noted that school choice measures make up a small share of overall state spending — nationally about 0.3% of total state expenditures in states with school choice, he said.

“Public schooling remains one of the largest line items in state budgets,” he said in an interview. “They are still the dominant provider of K-12 education, and certainly looking at the education pie, they still receive the lion’s share.

“It’s not a choice problem. I would say that it’s a problem with the status quo and the public school system,” he said.

Washington, D.C., and 35 states offer some school choice programs, according to EdChoice. That includes 18 states with voucher programs so expansive that virtually all students can participate regardless of income.

But Lueken said framing vouchers as a new entitlement program is misleading. That’s because all students, even the wealthiest, have always been entitled to a public education — whether they’ve chosen to attend free public schools or private ones that charge tuition.

“At the end of the day, the thing that matters most above dollars are students and families,” he said. “Research is clear that competition works. Public schools have responded in very positive ways when they are faced with increased competitive pressure from choice programs.”

Public school advocates say funding both private and public schools is untenable.

In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are considering a that would alter the funding structure for vouchers, potentially putting more strain on the state’s general fund.

The state spent about $629 million on its four voucher programs during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, which represents employees in school district finance, human resources and leadership.

The association warns proposed legislation could exacerbate problems with the “unaffordable parallel school systems” in place now by shifting more private schooling costs from parents of those students to state taxpayers at large.

Such expansion “could create the conditions for even greater funding challenges for Wisconsin’s traditional public schools and the state budget as a whole,” the association’s research director in a paper on the issue.

In Arizona, Hobbs originally sought to the universal voucher program — a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled legislature. She has since proposed by placing income limits that would disqualify the state’s wealthiest families.

That idea also faced Republican opposition.

Legislators are now pushing to enshrine access to vouchers in the state constitution.

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s 20,000-member teachers union, noted that vouchers and public education funds are both sourced from the general fund.

“So it almost immediately started to impact public services,” she said of the universal voucher program.

While the union says vouchers have led to cutbacks of important resources such as counselors in public schools, Garcia said the sweeping program also affects the state’s ability to fund other services like housing, transportation and health care.

“Every budget cycle becomes where can we cut in order to essentially feed this out-of-control program?” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

“This is the most conservative legislature in history. We will continue to deliver a conservative agenda that will protect liberty and promote prosperity,” Senate President wrote on X. “With our expanded majority we will make sure our communities are safe and that our kids have the best educational opportunities possible.”

The swing state’s legislative prospects garnered the and a flood of campaign spending, with nearly being spent to elect lawmakers across both parties in 13 races. Democrats focused most energy in five close races in suburban Tucson and Phoenix that could have shifted the Republicans’ previous two-vote majorities. 

Now with the control of both houses, the Republican party can act on their promise to grow the Empowerment Scholarship voucher program, which sends tax dollars to private schools and reimburses families for homeschooling expenses. 

Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs has ESA growth, stating when she took office it “would likely bankrupt the state.” Arizona is considered an unofficial beacon for school choice, the first in the nation to offer families anything resembling a voucher in 2011.

The ESA program, expanded to all families under Republican leadership past its original design to support kids with disabilities or in underperforming schools, was last year. 

The state’s schools chief has said it’s impossible to credit the program, which most recently cost the state about $718 million to support 78,000 students, as causing deficits in the state budget, pointing to an overall surplus in the Department of Education because of declines in projected charter spending. 

Whether or not the state’s budget will be further strained by Republicans’ legislative agenda to expand the program, in its current iteration, it’s also been criticized for lack of accountability. Parents were able, for example, to reimburse $800 driving lessons in luxury vehicles, golf merchandise, and visits to . 

“While you may think this may not be a good use of that family’s ESA funding, at the end of the day, they get a fixed amount of money, and if that’s how they’re going to choose to use it, that’s their prerogative,” ESA director John Ward . 

Today, the nearly 80,000 families enrolled in the program receive about $7,500 for their childrens’ educational expenses. According to the , the vast majority of funding went to schools that specialize in serving kids with disabilities, particularly autism, and private, religious schools. 

Roughly are students with disabilities, a higher proportion than the average in traditional public schools statewide. 

A revealed low-income families are using the program far less frequently than families in wealthier enclaves. For families living in poverty, the location of private schools and financial responsibility of taking on additional transportation, research, and meals costs makes “school choice” an unrealized promise. 

Gov. Katie Hobbs is setting her sights on the state’s private school voucher program, announcing a plan Tuesday to reform the program’s oversight and eligibility, less than a week out from the start of the new legislative session.

“Arizonans deserve to know their money is being spent on educating students, not on handouts to unaccountable schools and unvetted vendors for luxury spending,” Hobbs said in a written statement announcing her voucher regulation agenda. “My plan is simple: every school receiving taxpayer dollars must have basic standards to show they’re keeping our students safe and giving Arizona children the education they deserve.”

Arizona’s private school voucher program, known formally as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, has seen ballooning enrollment rates and costs since Republicans championed a that allows any student to receive a grant regardless of their public school history. The program, originally meant to benefit public school students attending failing schools or with special education needs, is projected to cost the state nearly $1 billion in the upcoming fiscal year, and is a driving factor in the state’s .

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A year ago, Hobbs sought to of the voucher program in her first year as governor, but vehement opposition from Republican lawmakers meant the proposal went nowhere. Now, the Democrat’s strategy to address accountability issues within the program is an admission that scrapping the program is a nonstarter.

But this package of reforms may be just as dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled legislature as last year’s proposed repeal.

Under the plan, which Hobbs said will be part of her 2024 executive budget proposal, private schools who accept voucher money will be required to meet some of the same safety and educational standard requirements that public schools do.

For example, teachers at those private schools would be required to pass fingerprint background checks and meet minimum education requirements before teaching ESA students. And private schools would be responsible for providing accommodations and services to students with disabilities in accordance with their Individualized Learning Plans or Section 504 plans. Hobbs’ proposal also aims to empower the state auditor general to monitor and report on how ESA money is being spent in private schools, similar to how spending in public schools is monitored.

The voucher program has faced increasing criticism for facilitating luxury expenses, including . Hobbs’ plan seeks to eliminate such expenses by requiring review and manual approval of purchases greater than $500 to “ensure purchases are utilized for an academic purpose”.

In an emailed statement, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, whose office oversees the ESA program, said that safeguard is already in place.

“My office already reviews all expense requests regardless of amount,” he said. “In 2023, we rejected several thousand ESA applications for lack of adequate documentation and suspended almost 2,200 accounts totaling $21 million because the student was enrolled in a public school. We’ve also rejected more than 12,000 ESA purchase order requests.”

Hobbs’ plan would also prevent price gouging by prohibiting private schools receiving ESA money from increasing tuition at a rate higher than inflation. And she wants to require the state education department to track absenteeism and graduation rates, and inform parents what parental and student rights are being given up when leaving the public school system.

While Hobbs stopped short of calling for a full repeal of the universal portion of the ESA program, her new plan would guarantee that voucher recipients have at least some public school history by requiring recipients to have attended a public school for at least 100 days before becoming eligible for a voucher. When the universal portion first went into effect in September of 2022, and by June of 2023, .

“The ESA program lacks accountability and transparency,” Hobbs said. “With this plan, we can keep students safe, protect taxpayer dollars, and give parents and students the information they need to make an informed choice about their education.”

Democratic lawmakers lauded Hobbs’ plan as a commonsense solution and denounced the Republican-led universal expansion for its deleterious impact on the state budget.

“With all the issues and pressing needs we have as a state, Republicans knew that an unaccountable subsidy for private schools was more than our taxpayers can afford,” said House Democratic Leader Lupe Contreras. “This plan provides common-sense guardrails and fiscal responsibility that this program — that any taxpayer-funded program — should have.”

“The Republican expansion of government to universal ESA vouchers has put our state’s financial security at risk, and our students at risk without any safeguards,” echoed Senate Democratic Leader Mitzi Epstein. “These safeguard policies are common sense and vitally important to help children learn and to keep children safe.”

But legislative Republicans, who hold a majority in each chamber, threw cold water on Hobbs’ proposed reforms.

“Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are wildly popular with Arizona parents because they leverage private sector solutions to offer the best educational opportunities for their children,” said House Speaker Ben Toma, a Peoria Republican who sponsored the universal expansion. “Meanwhile, Governor Hobbs and Democratic Party legislators now seek to strangle ESAs and private education with bureaucracy and regulation. I won’t allow that to happen.”

Senate Education Committee Chairman Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, said that while he would be open to addressing student safety and helping to protect students with disabilities, he is opposed to adding more hurdles for families seeking school choice.

“I do believe there are some common sense improvements that can be made to the program to ensure student safety, protect the rights of students with disabilities, and level the playing field between public, charter and private schools,” he said, in an emailed statement. “I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues this session to provide transparency and accountability, but we will not add layers of bureaucratic red tape, as some of the Governor’s proposals suggest, or discourage parents from participating in ESAs.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .

A data breach exposed the personal information of thousands of Arizona students enrolled in the state’s school voucher program, according to Gov. Katie Hobbs, but the state’s top education official says it’s not a problem.

Earlier this month, ClassWallet, the online financial administration platform that handles payments for Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program, suffered a data breach that jeopardized the names and disability categories of thousands of Arizona students. The incident triggered an investigation by the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, according to a sent from Hobbs, a Democrat, to Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a Republican, on Friday.

Over 60,000 Arizona students are currently enrolled in the ESA program, more than in the , Mesa Unified. A recent enrollment explosion was the result of a universal expansion passed last year by the GOP-controlled legislature. Previously, only public school students who met specific criteria, such as being a foster child, being part of a military family or having special education needs, qualified for a voucher that roughly equals the cost of teaching them in a public school. That voucher can then be used for homeschooling efforts or private school tuition.

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The expansion has been widely denounced by Democrats and public school advocates as bankrolling the education of wealthy Arizona families at taxpayer cost. The initial wave of new applicants last year were found to be and, as of June, those students continue to make up .

Hobbs, a long-time critic of the expansion who earlier this year , rebuked Horne in Friday’s letter about the data breach. She requested a detailed response by Aug. 3 explaining his administration’s actions regarding the breach, preventative measures in place for the future, how the department has notified parents, what laws may have been violated by the exposure of private educational information and whether or not the department has referred the problem to the state attorney general for investigation.

“It is my responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our state, our agencies, and our people,” Hobbs said, in a press release accompanying the letter. “Arizona students and families deserve to know that proper measures are in place to protect their personal information.”

In a letter released shortly after Hobbs’ request, Horne shot back that the incident was a nonissue and no cause for alarm. Once a breach was identified, Horne said, his office contacted ClassWallet. The company responded with assurances that the problem had been resolved internally and only one user had actually been affected.

“Parents were not notified because of the finding that it was a unique and isolated incident that affected no other users and was corrected right away,” Horne wrote.

Horne criticized Hobbs for not seeking answers to her questions about possible legal violations with the state department of homeland security.

“Since the department of homeland security is part of your office, we would have thought you would have checked with them before writing your letter that is full of wild exaggerations,” he wrote.

Data breach spat caps week of ESA scrutiny

The news of a data breach comes on the heels of a week of renewed criticism leveled against the ESA program and closely shadows the Aug. 1 deadline for the education department to select a vendor to oversee the program’s financial administration — which until now has been ClassWallet.

On Monday, Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, issued a consumer warning notification for parents considering taking advantage of school vouchers. She advised that leaving the public school system puts students in danger of losing critical non-discrimination protections.

“Families should know that when they accept an ESA, they lose protections from discrimination related to a child’s learning abilities, religion and sexual orientation,” Mayes .

Under state law, schools that accept vouchers aren’t required to abide by the same policies or laws that public schools do. Public school advocates have warned the loophole allows institutions that accept vouchers to discriminate against LGBTQ Arizonans while receiving state funds without legal repercussions, as happened in the who were told they weren’t welcome on their daughter’s private school campus earlier this year.

Also on Monday, two high ranking program administrators, Director Christine Accurso and her assistant, Operations Director Linda Rizzo, suddenly resigned, raising eyebrows among critics of the program. In her letter, Hobbs questioned their departures so soon before the first school year when school vouchers will be widely available.

“As students and parents prepare for a new school year, the sudden and unexpected departures of Director Accurso and Linda Rizzo raise concerns and questions about the administration of the ESA voucher program and the protection of student data under your supervision,” she wrote to Horne.

The ballooning cost of ESA vouchers to the state, and ultimately, taxpayers, also received renewed attention this week, after Hobbs’ office released a funding analysis sounding the alarm over skyrocketing costs. In June, the is likely to grow to 100,000 students in the next year and cost $900 million — hundreds of millions of dollars more than the $500 million allocated to the program in this year’s state budget.

An early of the voucher program’s impact, released while the expansion was being considered, estimated that it would cost just $65 million in fiscal year 2024.

outpaces even the education department’s whopping estimate, pinning the cost to Arizonans at more than $943 million and warning that the current funding level is set to fall short by more than $300 million in the upcoming year. The report notes that the rapidly increasing price tag of the voucher program means that more than 53% of new K-12 education spending in fiscal year 2024 will benefit ESA recipients, who represent just 8% of all Arizona students.

GOP leadership, however, remains skeptical of both financial reports and is .

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .

Arizona students now use an education savings account, or ESA, which provides about $7,000 per child annually for a huge array of school services. But with households in greater charge of curricular choices, some purchases are raising eyebrows, among them items like kayaks and trampolines, cowboy roping lessons and tickets to entertainment venues like SeaWorld. 

The apparent permissiveness is one reason Beth Lewis, a former teacher and director of Save Our Schools Arizona, opposes the program. “These are all the things that we scrape the couch cushions for to fund for our kids,” said Lewis, whose group enough signatures to put Ducey’s expansion of the program up for a referendum. 

The debate in Arizona is being closely watched by GOP governors hoping to emulate the state’s approach. With passage of a new program just , there are now nine states with ESAs and at least six more considering them. As in Arizona, the Iowa program will be open to any family that wants to participate. A Florida would do the same.

The juggernaut is part of a wider Republican push to win over parents disaffected by what they see as the public school system’s halting response to the pandemic and alienated by culture war clashes in the classroom. Experts say parents’ frustration over extended school closures contributed to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s . And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely seen as a 2024 presidential contender, has made parent choice a central focus of his administration and restricted about race and gender.

What Republicans see as a boon for family empowerment, however, many Democrats view as a Trojan horse for the dismantling of public education. In Arizona, the seemingly endless variety of options available to homeschoolers makes it difficult for state officials to regulate them — and that may be the point. The goal, school choice proponents say, is to break free of school bureaucracy and put parents in control.

“Lots of kids have different needs that public schools are not a good fit for,” said Marilyn Fitzpatrick, a Gilbert, Arizona, mom and former social studies teacher. She turned to ESAs to homeschool her oldest son Oliver after pulling him out of elementary school during the pandemic. She called remote learning with a kindergartner a “special kind of hell,” and said when he was placed in the lowest reading group, teachers told her not to worry. “It was concerning to be told, ‘It’s probably fine.’”

Others see the program as a springboard for innovation. Lura Capalongan, who is homeschooling her kindergartner Lexi, said Arizona’s ESA has allowed her to more than double what she spends on curriculum and materials — items like a small robot that teaches coding and a kit to build a simple scooter.

“I don’t feel like I’ve stretched the boundaries much,” she said. “We’ve been able to build a curriculum around her skills and her interests.”

But newly elected Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has less faith that the purchases parents are making are academically sound. Her first includes a plan to roll back the program to a limited group of families. lawmakers the program “lacks accountability and will likely bankrupt this state.” 

Under the law, participating families agree to provide instruction in the same as public schools. In addition to more traditional lesson plans, parents report that they meet — or attempt to meet — those requirements through activities like ice skating and sword casting classes, according to posts in a Facebook group for ESA users and vendors marketing their services.  

One parent in the group said she uses the Disney+ streaming service to “extend our learning” and asked if the state would approve the cost of a subscription. Others said they’ve received approvals for trampolines and horseback riding lessons.

Former state superintendent Kathy Hoffman, a Democrat who lost in November’s election to Republican Tom Horne, said she opposed the expansion because the rules are “incredibly permissive.”

“As long as an item can be tied to a curriculum — with curriculum being ill-defined and open to interpretation — that meets the definition of an allowable expense,” she said. “Striking the right balance between allowing parental choice and being good stewards of public tax dollars was a continual challenge faced by my administration.” 

According to the education department’s , some materials, like board games, puzzles and Legos, don’t require parents to submit a curriculum. But less-obvious items like dolls and stickers do. To justify buying a chicken coop for a science lesson, one parent posted a . Another suggested a workout from to support the purchase of a trampoline for physical education.

Teachers for core subjects need to have at least a bachelor’s degree, but for specific classes like art, drama or dance, a two-year degree or a credential is acceptable. Vendors in the Facebook group often list what students would learn from their programs. The sword casting instructor, for example, said he would teach students “archaeology, physics, history and metallurgy.”

But Lewis, who also helped organize 2018’s “Red for Ed” protests for higher teacher pay, accuses the state of not holding families and private schools accountable. She thinks standardized testing should be required for students who receive ESAs.

“We don’t know what the kids are learning or whether they’re learning,” she said.

‘Tailored to the individual student’

Craig Hulse, executive director of , a national organization that advocates for ESAs, thinks such criticisms are misguided. He said the public likely wouldn’t object to a school taking students on a field trip to SeaWorld or allowing ice skating to count toward a gym credit.

With an ESA, he said, it’s expected that parents’ choices would be “specifically tailored to the individual student.” 

Becky Greene, a Mesa parent, has five children, ages 7 to 17, using ESAs. For physical education, they all take taekwondo. She was able to afford a $200 Time-Life series on aviation for her oldest son, a “military history buff,” and a book on the chemical reactions involved in cooking for another son interested in culinary arts.

She once wondered how a parent in the Facebook group got approved for a kayak. But as someone “used to stepping out of the box,” she doesn’t question how others educate their children. 

Capalongan said she hopes to use ESA funds to help pay for the care of her daughter Lexi’s rabbit — items like a hutch, a litter box and nail clippers. Lexi joined an animal club similar to 4-H and is studying the rabbit’s anatomy and nutrition.

“It’s covering science and biology, but at a level that a kindergartner can understand,” she said.

‘Any reasonable’ expense 

Prior to the former governor’s expansion of the program, it was limited to specific groups of students, including those with disabilities, in foster care or in military families. 

Dave Wells, research director at the Grand Canyon Institute, a center-left think tank, said Hobbs took a “pretty important rhetorical step” by calling for a change in course. But with a Republican-controlled legislature, she might have to settle for tighter regulations to improve accountability, he said. 

Now, the program’s enrollment has nearly quadrupled and the state is working to speed up turnaround time for approvals and reimbursement.

“I walked into a backlog of 171, 575 orders,” Christine Sawhill Accurso, the program’s new executive director, wrote in a January email to participants. “We are making our way through that backlog as quickly as possible while still receiving thousands of new requests each day.”

Accurso, a former ESA parent, confirmed that the state has approved chicken coops, ice skating and cowboy roping lessons among a broad variety of ESA purchases. She has updated the to more closely match state law, but has also written in memos to ESA families that the department would approve “any reasonable education-related expense.” 

School choice advocates in other states are watching Arizona as officials try to define what’s reasonable.

Texas Republican Sen. Mayes Middleton has introduced a $10,000-per-student that would allow “every type of education” to qualify. Under his plan, the state comptroller would run the program instead of the education agency to avoid debates over curriculum.  

“The money is going to be spent,” he told ����Ӱ��. “Do you want only the government to decide [what to teach], or do you want parents to decide?”

In New Hampshire, by contrast,  the state applies some “Yankee frugality” to its program and for purchases that could be used by multiple family members, like a kayak or trampoline, said Kate Baker Demers, executive director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund.

“Right out of the gate, we said, ‘This is narrower than you think,’” she said. “We want to run it in a way that everyone can be supportive of it.”

Democrat Katie Hobbs has won the Arizona governor’s race, After a ballot count that lasted almost a week past Election Day, Hobbs, the secretary of state, narrowly beat out far-right Republican election-denier Kari Lake by 19,382 votes with 98% of the votes reported. Lake, a former local TV anchor who made attacks on the media a central part of her campaign, has not conceded and has alleged without evidence that the election was botched. Hobbs’s victory and that of Democratic secretary of state candidate Adrian Fontes are seen as crucial in a 2024 presidential battleground state that has been a focal point of false claims about the 2020 election.

The youth vote could prove consequential for the Arizona governor’s race, which remained too close to call: Democrat Katie Hobbs was barely leading Republican star and former Fox news anchor Kari Lake Wednesday evening in a contest that continued to tighten.

Exit polls show 76% of Arizona voters ages 18-29 cast their ballots for Democrats this year while 20% voted Republican — than in any other battleground state for a group that leans left.

Results may not be known until Friday morning as more than 275,000 unopened ballots are counted, the late Wednesday afternoon. The paper also quoted several GOP consultants who said other recent voter trends in the state could mean more of those votes go to Lake, an unapologetic election denier and a staple in Arizona households for more than two decades. 

Meanwhile, youth voter turnout in the state for years. It climbed 16 percentage points — from 10% to 26% — between 2014 and 2018, and 18 points — from 33% to 51% — between 2016 and 2020, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. 

Records show young Arizonans favored Joe Biden by a 31-point margin in 2020. Biden won the state by the slimmest of leads with fewer than 11,000 votes. Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly won his U.S. Senate race by 2.4 points that year, Tufts found. Kelly of Republican Blake Masters in his re-election bid this year with 51.2% of the vote to Master’s 46.6%

But young people’s loyalty to the Democratic party is not guaranteed, said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the center’s Newhouse director. While progressive groups have stirred civic engagement among youth as they promote everything from the environment to civil and abortion rights, young people remain underemployed and, in some cases, saddled with debt. Any candidate who promises tax and other financial relief may win a sizable portion of their vote moving forward, Kawashima-Ginsberg said. 

“Just because they voted for Democrats in the past doesn’t mean they always will,” she told ����Ӱ��. “That straight ticket voting is over for young people.”

Approval of a ballot proposition that would allow undocumented Arizona high school students and other non-citizen residents to qualify for in-state tuition rates at Arizona state universities and colleges had Wednesday, with 50.6% of voters favoring it and 49.4% voting no.

The outcome of the race between Hobbs and Lake, who were separated by Wednesday evening, could be highly consequential for the nation: Arizona will no doubt play a pivotal role in the 2024 presidential election — one in which former President Donald Trump might soon announce his candidacy. 

Hobbs, who has served as Arizona’s secretary of state since January 2019, defended challenges to the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. This election season she was roundly criticized for her refusal to debate Lake, a poised, polished speaker who had a slight edge going into Tuesday’s election. 

Known for being non confrontational and considered by some to be a poor debater, Hobbs said she made the decision because she did not think her opponent, a conspiracy theorist, deserved to share her views on such a large stage. Lake, a Trump favorite, counts Steve Bannon among her supporters. Her campaign mocked Hobbs, taunting her with the quip, and . 

Lake, who called for over false voter fraud claims, has said she would only accept the results of her own election if they were “fair.” She did not say if she would abide by the voters’ will .