Four years ago, Brian Kemp was running for governor of Georgia while serving as its secretary of state. Many of us on the right defended Kemp not only from Stacey Abrams’s fusillade of rigged-election conspiracy theories, but also from critics who said that it was a conflict of interest for a sitting secretary of state to seek a promotion to one of the headline offices in the state while overseeing that election. After all, other secretaries of state had done so before, and every elected secretary of state already oversees his or her own reelection. Moreover, secretaries of state exercise less control over elections than one might think: For example, Kemp was often blamed for long lines at polling places, yet it is local elections boards (many of them run by Democrats) who decide how many voting locations to have and where to put them. Indeed, Democrats screamed bloody murder when Kemp and the Georgia legislature last year tried to claim more authority to remove inadequate local elections supervisors.
I would say the same of Arizona secretary of state Katie Hobbs, now running for governor of Arizona. There is no reason to argue that she inherently can’t do both at once. And today’s meltdown of voting machines in Maricopa County, which is causing delays in a county normally known for swift and efficient casting of ballots, is doubtless more the fault of the Republicans who run the county. That said, Maricopa is the 800-pound gorilla of Arizona elections — two-thirds of the state’s voters live there, and it’s the only county in America that contains two of the nation’s 40 most populous cities within its borders (Phoenix is the nation’s fifth-largest city; Mesa is the 36th largest). It has been the epicenter of national-election-conspiracy theories for two solid years, and was subjected to a $7 million audit by the state senate of its 2020 election results. You would think that Hobbs would have personally overseen preparations for the county’s readiness. Conspiratorial concerns are already multiplying.
One has to wonder if more states should consider barring a sitting secretary of state from running for one of the marquee statewide offices, thus requiring them to either run for a different office as a stepping stone, wait until they are out of office, or resign upon winning their party’s nomination. In the current overheated climate, the appearance of conflict was more than enough to make Kemp a magnet for nationwide conspiracy theories, and the same will be true of Hobbs if she defeats Kari Lake or if Mark Kelly defeats Blake Masters. There are already states changing their laws to dilute the power of these elected offices out of concern for what kind of people may be elected to them in 2022. The once-sleepy world of elections administration may have to accept that.