12 (more) of the worst politicians in Arizona history

Tribalism and Trump derangement syndrome can really skew folks' perspectives. Granted, in the Donald Trump era, the bar for what constitutes a contemptible politician is lower than a manhole cover. How quickly we forget that the vast majority of our elected officeholders are self-serving egomaniacs who quite often get worse the longer they're in power. And for those who make politics a career, there is little hope of redemption.

Short attention spans and presentism have us judging foggy memories of the past by current events, conveniently forgetting horrors gone by. Bad behavior and corruption are the rule in politics, not the exception. Once you accept this simple fact of existence, you will be forever on guard — even with those pols who smile in your face, pat your back and tell you what you want to hear.

Last year, we brought you our list of the 12 worst politicians in Arizona history. But the Grand Canyon State boasts far more than just a dirty dozen. So, we're back with another installment. These 12 may not have been awful enough to crack our original list, but each is bad in his or her own special way.

Janet Napolitano

Ruthless self-advancement marked the political career of Napolitano, Arizona's 21st governor. She notoriously abandoned the state in 2009 to a nativist, Republican majority in the legislature — and to her GOP successor as governor, Jan Brewer — for a plum position as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration. Brewer went on to sign the odious "papers please" law, Senate Bill 1070, which led to a massive boycott of the state and spread fear throughout the Hispanic population. Though Napolitano had signed some anti-immigration legislation as governor, SB 1070 was universally opposed by Democrats and Napolitano surely would have vetoed it.

Should you be inclined to forgive her overweening ambition in this regard, keep in mind that during her tenure as Homeland Security Secretary from 2009-13, the department deported more than 3 million people. That exceeds the number of deportations in Trump's first presidency. Obama's regime ultimately deported more than 5 million people, earning Napolitano's jefe the moniker of "Deporter in Chief."

Nor should Arizonans forget Napolitano's years-long political alliance with Republican Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In 1997, while Napolitano was U.S. Attorney for Arizona, the U.S. Department of Justice brought a complaint against Arpaio for the cruelty in his jails, which employed deadly restraint chairs used to suffocate prisoners to death. When Arpaio was forced to eat crow and sign an agreement with the feds to improve conditions, Napolitano did him a solid, appearing with him at a joint press conference to downplay the agreement as nothing more than a "technicality" and "a lawyer's paper."

Arpaio returned the favor in 2002, crossing political lines to cut a TV ad defending Napolitano's record during her run for governor. In office, she helped Arpaio become part of the federal government's 287(g) program, which trains local law enforcement to act as immigration agents. Arpaio once had the largest 287(g) force in the nation, empowering his sweeps of Hispanic communities until Latino groups successfully pressured the Obama administration to strip Arpaio of that authority.

John McCain

Carpetbagger, warmonger and ratfucker extraordinaire, the late Sen. John McCain has been forgiven all sins by many Democrats for a couple of reasons. First, because Trump publicly excoriated the Vietnam vet as a "loser" and verbally attacked him on many occasions. Second, due to McCain's dramatic, 2017 thumbs-down vote to block the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Many conveniently forget that two other Republican senators also voted against the repeal. McCain just succeeded in hogging the credit.

As for the logic that, vis-a-vis Trump, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," catch a clue — McCain was never your friend. He was a slimy political opportunist. Earlier in his political career, McCain took campaign contributions and free plane trips to the Bahamas from savings and loan swindler Charles Keating and tried to protect the fraud king from government regulators, making McCain "the most reprehensible of the Keating Five." The collapse of Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan eventually cost taxpayers $3.4 billion to clean up.

Nor was this a one-off. The sleazoids, kooks and other questionable individuals McCain cozied up to over the years make quite the rogues gallery: disgraced Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, Silicon Valley con artist Elizabeth Holmes, Tucson developer Don Diamond, vice presidential pick Sarah Palin, convicted bootlegger Jim Hensley (his father-in-law), onetime Arizona Republic publisher and stolen valor-dictorian Darrow J. "Duke" Tully. And more.

Add these to McCain's list of sins: taking a $1 million donation from the murderous Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for his McCain Institute while carrying water for the country in the Senate; attempting to cover up his wife's theft of opioids from a non-profit she ran and retaliating against a whistleblower; and playing cheerleader in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, one of the many countries McCain has urged the United States to attack. Saint McCain? Please.

Dennis DeConcini

The three-term senator and Democrat is largely forgotten these days. That may be a good thing for him, though his name still pops up whenever anyone mentions the Keating Five scandal. Along with McCain, DeConcini went to bat for the infamous flim-flam man in two meetings in 1987, pressing government regulators to lay off Keating's doomed Lincoln Savings and Loan.

Both meetings took place in DeConcini's Senate office. When the regulators warned the Senators that a criminal referral was in the works for Keating, DeConcini "kept working on Keating's behalf for almost another two years," according to a 1993 piece by New Times investigative reporter John Dougherty. That same piece detailed how two of DeConcini's top aides did millions of dollars in deals with Keating, though DeConcini denied being aware of this.

DeConcini reportedly accepted $81,000 from Keating and Keating's pals but painted himself as a victim during Senate ethics hearings on the scandal. He never recovered as a result, choosing not to run for a fourth term in 1994. He was also accused of enriching himself while in office, purchasing land (along with other members of his family) in 1979 that was in the path of the Central Arizona Project and selling a portion of it to the government for a 540% gain. At the time, the senator claimed he had "no inside information" on the CAP expansion.

The Tucson Democrat was a bit of a nepo baby, the son of Evo DeConcini, an Arizona attorney general and Arizona Supreme Court justice. According to famed New Times political columnist Tom Fitzpatrick, Evo was tight with mafia boss and Tucson transplant Joe Bonanno. The younger DeConcini did his best to downplay the connection, saying his family only knew Bonnano as a, ahem, retired Wisconsin cheesemaker.

Kyrsten Sinema

Consider Sinema as the arriviste who failed miserably, and all because she had such open contempt for the voters who put her in office. The Green Party activist-turned-Democrat-turned-Independent ultimately went down to the crossroads and sold her political soul to Old Nick, all of it to end after one six-year term in the Senate. Sinema finally announced the inevitable in early 2024: that she was not running for reelection due to being near-universally despised by the Arizona electorate. She claimed it was, "Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done,” and that's "not what America wants right now.”

In reality, she went from leading protests against war and SB 1070 to voting against a $15 minimum wage with an insensitive, curtsied thumb down on the Senate floor. To supporters who took umbrage, she had a message: an Instagram shot of her sucking down sangria while flashing a "Fuck Off" ring. She defended tax loopholes that benefitted her billionaire backers, and high-fived her fellow obstructionist, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

And if she was not to the manor born, she definitely felt entitled to the luxury befitting her newfound stature. Sinema drew a Federal Elections Commission complaint over $180,000 in campaign expenditures before she'd announced she wasn't seeking reelection. Those expenses included "luxury hotels, posh resorts, Michelin-star restaurants, international travel and winery visits." Even after leaving, she outspent all of her colleagues on security during her last two years in office to the tune of $1.7 million, which included $300 to suit up her security detail in tuxes.

Fife Symington

The political career of John Fife Symington III, great-grandson of steel baron Henry Clay Frick and Arizona's 19th governor, came to a cataclysmic end on Sept. 5, 1997. That's when he resigned after being convicted on seven felony counts involving bank and wire fraud for "knowingly submitting false financial documents to three lenders." Symington was already tarnished by having to file for bankruptcy while in office, with a debt of over $24 million when his real estate investments tanked.

In February 1998, a federal judge sentenced Symington to 30 months in prison, which the former governor avoided serving while his case was on appeal. A year later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the convictions, finding that the lower court erred in dismissing a juror during deliberations. The feds seemed poised to go after him again and Symington reportedly was ready to enter into a plea agreement to avoid trial, only for old pal Bill Clinton to pardon him before Clinton left the White House. The pardon was apparently payback for Symington having saved Clinton from drowning off the coast of Massachusetts in 1964.

Tom Horne

Despite the sleaze and scandal of his one-term stint as Arizona Attorney General — in addition to his lifetime ban on involvement in the securities trade from the Securities and Exchange Commission — Horne somehow returned to his previous post as Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2022 with a win over Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman.

Such is the benefit of sitting out a few cycles and relying on the short attention span of the public, which had forgotten all about his tawdry time as the state's top lawyer. Back then, the FBI investigated him, looking to nail him on alleged wire fraud, tampering with witnesses and obstruction of justice. Alas, prosecutors never pursued charges, even though a brave whistleblower named Sarah Beattie came forward to detail how Horne had improperly used his office and staff to run for reelection.

Perhaps most embarrassing for Horne was an incident that sprang from the FBI's investigation. While the FBI was tailing him, agents saw him commit an act of vehicular hit-and-run on a parked car. Horne was allegedly en route to an assignation with his mistress, whom he had hired for a job in his office. (Of course!) Horne was married at the time, earning him the unoriginal sobriquet "Horne-dog." When Horne's wife passed, he married the mistress, so true love triumphed in the end.

Accusations that Horne had improperly colluded with an independent expenditure committee hung over his head for years, as did the possibility of a $400,000 fine. But it ultimately came to naught, and Horne never had to pay penny one. Now, the 79-year-old oversees the state's public school system and is making a right mess of it, partnering with the right-wing nonprofit PragerU, nearly losing $29 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education (which he thinks should be abolished) and making it easier for parents to exploit the ESA voucher system. The one good thing we can say about Horne is that he's said he doesn't want ICE hunting for undocumented kids in Arizona schools. So kudos on that one, at least.

Trent Franks

Two things sure to survive after a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches and reprobate politicians, such as Franks.

The former Republican congressman resigned in disgrace in 2017 after nearly seven terms as one of "the most conservative members" of the U.S. House of Representatives. Franks fell on his sword after the House Ethics Committee began investigating allegations that he had sexually harassed female staffers, including two he pressured to be surrogate mothers for him and his wife. Franks even allegedly offered one staffer $5 million to carry his baby. Talk about an indecent proposal. Franks later admitted to discussing surrogacy with the women but claimed he never pressured anyone for sex.

Franks could've afforded the $5 million, given his estimated net worth in 2017 of more than $30 million due to his connections to the oil and gas industry. Known for his anti-Muslim stances as well as his perfervid opposition to abortion, Franks was infamous for suggesting in 2010 that African Americans were better off under slavery than in modern America with Roe v. Wade in effect. Last year, Trent joined a passel of other extremist nutjobs vying for retiring Rep. Debbie Lesko's seat. He came in fourth in the primary, which might dissuade a normal person from ever running for office again. But no one's ever accused Trent Franks of being normal.

Andy Biggs

To judge from his reception at the recent Arizona Republican Party convention, Biggs could be a shoo-in to win the GOP nomination for governor in 2026. State committee members enthusiastically cheered the uber-conservative five-term congressman when he announced his intention to take on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. They booed and hissed at the mere mention of his primary rival, multimillionaire gadfly Karrin Taylor Robson. Of course, Biggs has his own millions to draw on — $10 million, to be exact — by virtue of his winning the American Family Sweepstakes in 1993. Who said dumb luck doesn't count?

The anti-abortion, anti-immigrant pol is backing a bill to deprive birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. The Gilbert Republican also has been linked to the "Stop the Steal" effort to overturn the 2020 election, claiming that the winner of the presidential contest in Arizona that year was unknown. (Duh, it was Joe Biden.) He's denied allegations that he had anything to do with the planning of the Jan. 6 rally that later devolved into an assault on the U.S. Capitol, falsely claiming that Antifa and Black Lives Matter were involved in the ruckus. Two of Biggs' brothers told the Arizona Republic they believed that their sibling was at least partially to blame for the uprising, but this is likely only to bolster Biggs' standing with the MAGA faithful.

Anthony Kern

The former state senator was an also-ran in the same "clown car" congressional primary as Franks, coming in fifth with less than 5% of the vote. Ouch. But we've hardly seen the last of him. Kern is a former El Mirage code enforcement officer who got canned from the job for lying to a superior, earning a placement on the Maricopa County Attorney's Office's infamous Brady list of dishonest cops. While in the Arizona Legislature, he backed an effort to allow law enforcement to challenge their inclusion on the list, only to have it watered down so it would not benefit him directly.

Kern was indicted last year for his role in the fake electors scheme to overthrow the 2020 election, a matter that is still pending in the courts. And guess where he was on Jan. 6, 2021? Yep, right smack dab in the midst of the MAGA crowd storming the Capitol. He's also known for his attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and for an unhinged 2024 episode in which he led a half-dozen anti-abortion zealots in a prayer that involved speaking in "tongues" on the floor of the state Senate. That stunt won him New Times' award for "Best Religious Nuttery." Not exactly the same as being on the Brady list, but close.

Wendy Rogers

It takes quite a lot for Arizona's MAGA-majority legislature to censure such a devoted Donald Trump follower as Rogers. But that's what happened in March 2022, when her fellow state senators voted 24-3 to censure her for "conduct unbecoming of a senator." Specifically, Rogers was reprimanded for "encouraging violence" during her remarks at a white nationalist conference, where she reportedly called for "high-level officials" to swing from "a newly built set of gallows." On social media, she also promised to "personally destroy the career" of any Republicans who went after her.

Rogers has been blasted for repeating antisemitic tropes on social media, being a "charter member" of the anti-government Oath Keepers militia and for suggesting that a 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo was a false flag operation carried out by the feds. She's denied the results of the 2020 election and blamed the Jan. 6 insurrection on "violent antifa mobs."

Last year, she celebrated wins by far-right parties in local German elections by posting the lyrics to an old Nazi fave, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles." She later claimed she had no truck with Nazis, though she happens to follow a few of them on X. It's been a long, strange political turn for the former Air Force pilot who began her political career a rather wallflower-ish Republican. But as long as it works for her, there's no end in sight.

Mark Finchem

Samuel Johnson said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But in Arizona, the shield for scallywags is legislative immunity, which Finchem recently invoked to get out of a speeding citation in Prescott. Like Rogers, the Republican state senator claimed to be a member of the Oath Keepers (though he later denied it), and he's been a purveyor of right-wing conspiracy theories. A fellow GOP legislator once referred to the cowboy-hat-wearin' Finchem as "one of the dumbest legislators," but brains are not needed to rise in the Arizona Republican Party these days. It's Trump-loving extremism that counts, and it got Finchem about five points away from becoming Arizona's secretary of state in the 2022 election.

As with Kari Lake in her loss to Hobbs that year, Finchem sued, claiming shenanigans at the ballot box cost him the office by about 120,000 votes. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge later tossed Finchem's claims. Finchem also believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and (sigh) attended Trump's Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally, though he's tried to walk back his presence. He once claimed that the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — which ended in violent melees and one death when a neo-Nazi plowed his car through a crowd of people — had "Deep State PSYOP written all over it."

Jake Hoffman

Hoffman's got Finchem, his fellow Republican and state senator, beat. Finchem used his legislative immunity to dodge a speeding ticket for going a mere 18 miles over the limit. But on Jan. 22, the Arizona Highway Patrol clocked Hoffman doing 89 in a 65 mph zone and declined to cite him, supposedly because Hoffman was "recognized" as a legislator. Hoffman's no piker when it comes to playin' hooky, which is why he came in second as the legislator with the most excused absences from the session in 2024. He was also late 14 times. Was that why he was speeding?

Hoffman is a blowhard and useless legislator who revels in performative stunts like his unconstitutional effort to ban Satanic displays from government property, which was defeated on the Senate floor. His latest lunatic proposal is to create a bounty system for local law enforcement to round up undocumented immigrants, using a tax on wire transfers out of the United States. Predictably, Gov. Hobbs has promised to veto it, again making the founding chair of the Arizona Freedom Caucus one of the least effective members of the legislature.

Notably, Hoffman's company Rally Forge was banned from Facebook in 2020 for "coordinated inauthentic behavior," basically creating fake accounts to push pro-Trump narratives. Hoffman is closely allied with Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. In 2024, Hoffman was indicted by a state grand jury in Arizona's fake electors scheme along with Kern and several others. Apparently, that's one charge to which legislative immunity does not apply. Rather, Hoffman has declared his innocence. He was subsequently elected to represent Arizona on the Republican National Committee.