Campaign Ads, Senate Power, and a Bill That Never Got a Vote: What Biggs and Hobbs Said
Summary: On September 28, Republican gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs posted a video saying Gov. Katie Hobbs is repeating a false claim about his record and that she will not debate him. Hobbs’s campaign ads say that as Senate president in 2013 he blocked a bill aimed at the Colorado City Marshal’s Office, which federal courts later found had operated as an arm of Warren Jeffs’s FLDS faction. This brief records both claims, the 2012 and 2013 bills, what regular order actually requires of a Senate president, and the federal findings that followed. Mention of any candidate is not an endorsement.
ARIZONA — Campaign season compresses a decade of lawmaking into 30-second ads. Citizens still have the underlying record: bill numbers, committee assignments, court orders, and each campaign’s own words.
On September 28, Biggs posted a video on X with the caption: “Katie Hobbs is lying about me again. Her whole campaign is based on lies, which is why she can’t get on a stage and debate me. Learn the facts HERE!”
The clip answers Hobbs campaign ads that have run for months tying Biggs to Warren Jeffs and the old Colorado City Marshal’s Office. Hobbs has used that same charge in interviews. Biggs calls the charge a lie and points to the absence of a joint debate as the reason the charge keeps circulating.
Neither statement is self-executing. The civic question is what the Legislature actually did, what regular order requires of a Senate president, and what a federal court later found.
What the Hobbs ads and interviews say
Hobbs’s campaign has released multiple ads accusing Biggs of “protecting pedophiles,” linking his 2013 Senate tenure to Jeffs, the Colorado City Marshal’s Office, and, in later spots, Jeffrey Epstein file votes.
On August 28 she told KTAR: “These marshals were protecting these pedophiles and allowing them to continue to abuse and rape women and children and force them into marriage. And Andy Biggs stopped this bill.” She added that “even the Republican sponsor said that because of that, abuse continued for years longer than it needed to.”
The sponsor was then-Rep. Michelle Ugenti (later Ugenti-Rita). In later comments she said women and children “suffered three years longer than they should have because he protected the bad guys.”
Hobbs’s process claim is specific to the Senate presidency: “You’re the one that makes those decisions. You assign it to committees. You can waive the rules … you can change the committee assignment. He stopped it from having a vote.”
A civic note the ads often skip: the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) is a breakaway polygamous sect. It is not The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeffs was convicted in 2011 of sexually assaulting girls ages 12 and 15 whom he had forced into marriage.
Source: Justice Department lawsuit win.
What Andy Biggs said
In the September 28 video, Biggs again denies the ad’s framing, returns to Warren Jeffs’s 2011 conviction, and closes on the debate: “She won’t debate me.”
In a September 4 KTAR interview he gave a more detailed defense:
He voted yes on a 2012 Senate bill (SB 1433) that would have created a path to decertify the Colorado City Marshal’s Office. That bill failed.
He opposed the 2013 House bill because, he said, it was “so poorly crafted that the Fraternal Order of Police and the Arizona Police Association opposed it.”
“She can say whatever she wants to say, but I’ll stack my record up against hers. And by the way, that’s why police associations endorse me.”
He pointed to later federal bills he backed, including the CSAFE Act and Kayleigh’s Law, as evidence of his child-protection record. “Whatever she wants to say it’s bogus, it’s crap, and it’s a lie.”
Asked earlier whether he knew about underage-marriage allegations at the time, he said: “We heard bits and pieces of it. It was also under investigation by the feds at the time.” In another exchange: “I was the Senate president. I knew what was going on.”
Capitol Media Services put a finer point on the paper trail: there is no question Biggs opposed the 2013 bill. There is also “nothing in the record showing that Biggs was personally responsible for burying the legislation.” What the record does show is that after the House passed it, Biggs, as Senate president, assigned it to two committees. It never received a Senate floor vote.
The 2012 and 2013 bills were not the same instrument
Citizens comparing ads to the journal need two sessions, not one.
2012. Then-Attorney General Tom Horne pushed legislation to replace Colorado City policing with the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office. A similar House measure failed near the last day of session. Critics called an earlier draft “special legislation,” which the Arizona Constitution restricts. Biggs says he voted for SB 1433; that version did not become law.
2013 — HB 2648. Ugenti’s bill created a general mechanism: the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (AZPOST) could move toward decertifying a small agency if enough of its officers lost certification, with a county-appointed administrator taking over. The House passed it 52–7. The Police opposed it. Biggs assigned the bill to Public Safety and to Government and Environment Committees. It died in the Senate when the Committee Chairs wouldn't hear the bill.
Regular order is how the people keep the power
Referring a bill is the Senate president’s job. It is not a secret veto.
Arizona’s own legislative manual lists “Reference of bills” as a regular order of Senate business. The president assigns measures to standing committees so members can hear testimony, amend text, and vote the proposal up or down. In practice, the president rarely withholds a Senate bill from committee. After referral, chairs decide whether to set a hearing. That is the body doing its work.
Regular order is how the people keep the power. Each senator is elected. Committees are where those senators — and the public, through Request to Speak and hearings — actually touch a bill. A Senate president who waives the rules, yanks a bill onto the floor, or buries it in his desk without the body is not “doing the job.” That is one officer acting as czar.
Hobbs’s own party campaigns on “No Kings.” Regular order is the Senate version of that rule. No king on the dais. The body works the bill.
Biggs assigned HB 2648 to Public Safety and to Government and Environment. That is an assignment under regular order, not a floor “no.” It's normal for a bill to be assigned to multiple committees. The Senate Committee Chairs never heard the bill for a vote. A bill can stall in committee for ordinary reasons: drafting fights, police-group opposition, a chair who will not calendar it, or the clock. The Hobbs claim treats that referral as “he stopped the bill,” which only works if the president was supposed to be king — waive the rules, change the assignment, force the vote. That is the opposite of “No Kings.”
Hobbs describes the presidency as the act that killed the bill: he assigns committees, he can waive rules, he can change the assignment, “he stopped it from having a vote.” Biggs describes the 2013 draft as poorly written and opposed by the Fraternal Order of Police and the Arizona Police Association. Those are two different claims. One asks the president to use king power. The other is about the text. Regular order does not settle the text fight. It does settle who is supposed to hold the pen: the body, not the dais.
What a federal court later found
The Legislature’s stall did not end the underlying facts.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued Colorado City and Hildale. On March 7, 2016, a Phoenix jury found a pattern of religious discrimination in housing, utilities, and policing. In an advisory verdict on the policing claim, the jury found that the marshal’s office operated as an arm of Jeffs’s FLDS faction, in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, and engaged in discriminatory and unconstitutional stops and seizures.
On April 18, 2017, U.S. District Judge H. Russell Holland adopted those findings and ordered a 10-year remedy: revised marshal policies, new internal-affairs and hiring rules, two new officers, a police-practices consultant, a mentor for the chief, civil-rights training, and a court monitor. The towns paid $1.6 million to resolve the Fair Housing Act damages. DOJ had asked the court to disband the office; the court imposed supervision instead of dissolution.
Source: federal court order.
Those findings came years after the 2013 session. They do not convert a 2013 committee assignment into a personal alliance with Jeffs. They do show why the marshal’s office was not a routine local-control dispute.
The debate the ads are standing in for
Biggs’s September 28 close — “She won’t debate me” — is a separate civic fact.
On July 30, Hobbs campaign manager Nicole DeMont said the campaign was declining debate invitations “because face-to-face engagement with Arizonans is more effective than a stage designed for short soundbites and political theater.” The campaign cited more than 100 open-press events and an “Arizona First Tour.”
Coverage: Arizona Mirror; Arizona Capitol Times.
Hobbs has not debated a general-election opponent since her 2018 secretary of state race. She declined to share a stage with Kari Lake in 2022. Biggs skipped some primary and congressional forums of his own; his campaign said he would appear at the Citizens Clean Elections Commission debate on October 6. Hobbs has not agreed to that format. KTAR noted that the August 25 Arizona Police Association forum, where the two spoke separately, may be the only shared-policy event before November.
A debate is the one format where each candidate has to answer the other’s characterization of the same bill, the same court order, and the same vote in the same hour. Ads do not have to do that. Understanding basic civics of how the legislature works is the answer to this question.
How to read this as a citizen
Three checks travel better than any ad:
Separate the sect from the church. FLDS is not LDS. Treating them as one is sloppy civics.
Separate regular order from a king veto. Referring HB 2648 was the Senate president doing the job the rules give that office. Regular order is how the people keep power — elected senators, committees, hearings. “No Kings” means the president does not personally dictate the floor result. HB 2648 passed the House 52–7 and never received a Senate roll call. That is the journal. It is not the same thing as a personal “no.”
Read the later court order. The 2016–17 federal findings are the most complete public record of what the marshal’s office was. They arrived after the Legislature declined to act.
The September 28 video and the Hobbs ads are arguments about that record. The record itself is still in the journals, the KTAR interviews, and the Justice Department case file.
Any mention of political candidates is not an endorsement. This brief is voter education on stated positions and on the legislative and court record. It does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.
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