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Who biffed it the hardest this year? Here are Arizona’s top turkeys

From politicians to cops to a billionaire owner of a pro sports franchise, these are Arizona's biggest losers of the year.
Image: cartoon turkeys of kari lake, katie hobbs, alex meruelo, tom horne, a phoenix police officer and skip hall
Arizona had some big losers in 2024. Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.
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Giving thanks? No thanks.

At Phoenix New Times, we’d prefer to observe the Thanksgiving holiday in a different fashion. While Valley residents sit down with their families and desperately avoid talking politics, we’re steering into the skid. While you roast a turkey at home, we’re roasting a few turkeys right here.

By turkeys, we mean losers, failures, embarrassments — a lot of people biffed it in 2024, and we think that’s worth pointing out. Get your plate ready, because we’re carving them up. From politicians to cops to billionaire sports owners, here are the biggest flops of the year.

Kari Lake

click to enlarge a drawing of kari lake's head coming out of a cooked turkey
Kari Lake lost her second statewide election in 2024, this time by a larger margin than the first.
Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.

This year was an endless parade of bad news for Lake, Arizona’s highest-profile MAGA firebrand. Instead of rising from the ashes of a gubernatorial loss two years ago, Lake cemented her status as a loser with a second consecutive statewide political defeat.

Running for a U.S. Senate seat soon to be vacated by Kyrsten Sinema, Lake was always expected to lose to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. The year began with Lake getting booed at the annual meeting of the Arizona Republican Party. Lake then consistently ran behind Gallego in polling all year, unable to shake her gaffes from the previous cycle.

Much of her campaign was defined by her comical flip-flops on abortion and by her court battles — one to overturn her 2022 election loss and the other a defamation case brought against her by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. Lake managed to claim victory in neither.

As the year wore on, the flimsiness of Lake’s support became more and more apparent. GOP megadonor Randy Kendrick urged her inner circle to support Lake’s primary opponent, warning that Lake had no shot at winning the general election. National Republicans lost faith and stopped spending money on Lake’s campaign.

In the end, Lake did worse than before. Donald Trump won the state by 188,000 votes, but Lake lost to Gallego by about 80,000 — a far worse margin than Lake had in her 2022 defeat.

However, Lake did win something this year: Phoenix New Times awarded her the 2024 title for Best Dumpster Fire. – TJ L’Heureux

Katie Hobbs

click to enlarge katie hobbs as a turkey
Gov. Katie Hobbs made it her mission to flip the Arizona Legislature blue, but instead it wound up more red.
Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.

The two years that Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has spent in office have been defined by gridlock. With a Republican-controlled state legislature, Hobbs has frequently exercised her veto pen but also run into barriers herself.

When Republicans wouldn’t confirm her agency nominees, Hobbs tried to squeeze through a loophole by technically demoting them. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge quashed that idea. Hobbs has also taken flack for sketchy fund allocations to a group home and, recently, for allegations of nepotism by her state tourism director, who now will resign.

Many of those problems could be solved by one thing: a Democratic-controlled legislature.

Hobbs set out to flip both the Arizona House and Senate, with state Democrats spending $10 million to do so. While Hobbs was barely visible whenever Kamala Harris campaigned in Arizona — an absence for which there’s been no satisfying explanation — she pounded the pavement often for state legislature candidates heading into November.

And then … Democrats lost seats in both chambers, handing Republicans a more ironclad majority. For the next two years, Hobbs will face an even more hostile legislature than before. Already, buzz abounds about a possible 2026 primary challenge from Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes or Attorney General Kris Mayes.

If Democrats can boot an incumbent president just months before an election, there’s no telling what might happen to Hobbs’ reelection bid in two years. – Zach Buchanan

Phoenix Police

click to enlarge a cartoon turkey in a phoenix police uniform
The U.S. Department of Justice torched the Phoenix Police Department in a June report, only for Phoenix cops to make national headlines months later for beating a deaf Black man.
Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.

The Phoenix Police Department is one rancid, ptomaine-filled fowl for which we are not giving thanks.

In June, the U.S. Department of Justice released a damning 126-page report calling out the department for a host of abuses — excessive force plus mistreatment and discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities, the homeless, disabled people and even children.

Since then, Phoenix cops have done nothing but prove the DOJ right.

Case in point: The recent release of footage showing Phoenix cops’ shocking, unprovoked beatdown, Tasering and arrest of a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy. The incident was a perfect example of what the DOJ described as a “force first” mentality ingrained in Phoenix’s supposed finest.

According to the report, the City of Phoenix “has trained its officers that all force — even deadly force — is de-escalation." No wonder Phoenix cops have shot and killed 12 people so far this year, matching last year’s total and putting the police on a path to exceeding it.

Our local political leaders have largely played ostrich over the need for a vigorous consent decree to rein in this unnecessary violence. And given Donald Trump’s open encouragement of police brutality in the past, his Nov. 5 victory likely means the chances for police reform in Phoenix are deader than the turkey on your Thanksgiving dinner table. – Stephen Lemons

Alex Meruelo

click to enlarge a cartoon turkey with a hockey stick and in a Coyotes jersey, with the head of former owner Alex Meruelo on top
Erstwhile Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo pulled the rug out from under fans this year by selling the team to a new owner, who moved it to Utah.
Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.

The most popular billionaires in America — besides, inexplicably, Elon Musk — are the owners of sports franchises that win titles. The most despised might be owners who rip beloved teams away from fans in search of a bigger buck elsewhere.

Guess which one Alex Meruelo is?

Until recently, Meruelo owned the Arizona Coyotes, a Valley staple since the 1990s. Their fan base was small but passionate, even as the team struggled to find consistent success or a permanent home in Maricopa County. Last season, the Coyotes were consigned to playing in the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena at Arizona State University.

The idea that a pro hockey team won’t work here is hardly ridiculous, but how Meruelo abandoned the Valley was. Meruelo and the Coyotes were all-in on securing an arena deal in the Valley until, with a week left in the season, they suddenly weren’t. By the time the team’s final home game of 2024 rolled around, news had broken that the club would be sold and relocated to Salt Lake City, pulling the rug out from under fans.

Meruelo retained the rights to start a new Coyotes franchise in the sale, but he bailed on a potential Phoenix land deal as soon as it got hard.

Meanwhile, the Coyotes are no more. The “Utah Hockey Club” lives on. – Zach Buchanan

Tom Horne

click to enlarge a cartoon turkey with the head of tom horne
When he wasn't waging culture war battles, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne was missing allocation deadlines for federal school funds.
Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.

If Tom Horne is good at one thing, it’s waging dumb culture wars.

The Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction has spouted anti-trans rhetoric, made life more difficult for teachers, platformed the far-right education site PragerU and claimed that rainbow stickers make kids dumber. He’s endorsed the idea of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and railed against Critical Race Theory, which isn’t even taught in Arizona schools.

One thing Horne is bad at is his job. In the two years of his current term, his administration has been defined by lengthy delays in Empowerment Scholarship Account reimbursements and somehow also a loosey-goosey standard for what ESA parents can buy with state funds.

Then there’s the $29 million in federal grants he nearly let slip.

That saga was reported by The Arizona Republic, which chronicled how Horne’s office missed an allocation deadline and then baselessly blamed the screw-up on his Democratic predecessor. It took a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education — which, again, Horne wants to abolish — to fix the blunder.

The 79-year-old Horne, who bears an eerie resemblance to Beetlejuice’s shrunken-headed minion “Bob,” has always been a magnet for scandal. If he spent 2024 making all the wrong headlines, well, that’s just Horne doing what he does best. – Morgan Fischer

Skip Hall

click to enlarge the head of surprise mayor skip hall on a turkey
Surprise Mayor Skip Hall brought his city the wrong kind of attention when he had a woman arrested at a city council meeting just for criticizing a public employee.
Illustration by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.

When a suburban city council meeting makes national headlines, it’s usually for a bad reason. And when the headlines are so big that people outside of Arizona know where Surprise is or that Hall is its mayor, it’s for a really bad reason.

During the public comment portion of an Aug. 20 city council meeting, Hall got into a verbal spat with Libertarian activist Rebekah Massie. Massie was criticizing a proposed pay raise for the city attorney when Hall cut her off to warn that she’d broken a meeting rule about not speaking negatively about city employees. Massie rightfully noted such a rule violates the First Amendment.

Then Hall had her arrested.

The arrest generated national outcry, led to an ongoing free speech lawsuit against the city and prompted Republican lawmaker John Kavanagh to request an investigation by the state attorney general. Quickly and quietly, Hall and the city council changed the rule in question, though it took two months for criminal charges against Massie to be dropped.

Hall’s term is expiring, and he’ll soon return to civilian life, where he hopefully can’t order police to do anything. – Zach Buchanan