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No, Arizona drivers won’t be able to buy a commemorative license plate in honor of slain far-right conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
On Friday afternoon, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the Republican-backed legislation that would have allowed the Department of Transportation to issue “conservative grassroots network special plates” to paying drivers. While the specific group isn’t named (thanks to the gift clause), it’s generally believed, based on the narrow description in the text of the bill, that the entity ready to pony up the initial $32,000 implementation fee to create the plates’ design is Turning Point USA, Kirk’s Phoenix-based arch-conservative organizing group.
In her three-paragraph veto letter to Republican Senate President Warren Petersen, Hobbs wrote that she aims to bring people together and that this measure fell “short of the standard by inserting politics into a function of government that should remain nonpartisan.”
She also acknowledged Kirk’s grim death. She called his shooting an “assassination” and a “tragic and a horrifying act of violence.” She added: “In America, we resolve our political differences at the ballot box. No matter who it targets, political violence puts us all in harm’s way and damages our sacred democratic institutions.”
Earlier this week, Arizona’s Republican-led legislature passed the bill through both chambers. The state offers a bounty of specialty vehicle plates — some 120 options in all. The Kirk plate would’ve been the first dedicated to a single person, and certainly the first dedicated to a figure so political.
The specialty license plate bill was sponsored by Sen. Jake Hoffman, a far-right Republican and close Kirk ally whose companies have been paid millions of dollars by the TPUSA. The bill would have allowed for the creation of special state license plates memorializing Kirk and recognizing the group he founded. Drivers would pay $25 to receive a specialty plate, of which TPUSA would receive $17. The other eight dollars would go toward the State Highway fund.
In a social media post after Hobbs’ veto, Hoffman slammed Hobbs’ decision as an act of “grotesque partisanship” and said she “couldn‘t find the human decency to put her far-Left extremism aside.” He characterized Kirk — who in death, as in life, faced criticism for making nakedly racist comments — as a “global civil rights leader.” Hoffman also attached a photo of a marked-up version of the commemorative plate, showing Kirk with his fist up and the TPUSA logo behind him on an American flag background.
Hoffman’s special license plate idea was one of several making their way through the state legislature. Another bill, which has so far cleared the Senate, would name State Loop 202 after Kirk and name a statute after him on the Capitol grounds.
Kirk was shot and killed on Sept. 10 while speaking at a Utah university for a TPUSA event. His death put Phoenix in the spotlight as people built a memorial to him at the TPUSA headquarters, students mourned him at Arizona State and more than a hundred thousand people mobbed State Farm Stadium in Glendale to see the president and other right-wing figures eulogize Kirk at a gargantuan political rally.
