Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will win the Democratic nomination for governor, CNN projects, potentially setting the stage for a November general election focused on the integrity of the state’s largely mail-in election system. 

Hobbs is seeking to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. 

She was heavily favored against Marco Lopez, the former mayor of Nogales who worked as the head of former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s commerce department and later, as chief of staff for US Customs and Border Protection during Napolitano’s tenure as Homeland Security secretary. 

Hobbs emerged as a national figure as she defended Arizona’s 2020 election results against a raft of unfounded conspiracy theories advanced by former President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters in the state. 

Republicans in the Arizona Senate commissioned a partisan review of the 2020 results in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. That review did not change the reality that now-President Biden won in 2020. Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company hired to conduct the review, and its subcontractors cast doubt on the veracity of tens of thousands of votes, though elections experts immediately pointed out Cyber Ninjas’ errors. Still, election deniers seized on the partisan review to advance their false claim that Trump was the victim of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. 

Hobbs has signaled she will focus on the issue of election integrity in November. Over the weekend, in an op-ed in The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, Hobbs said that lies about election fraud have led to threats against local elections workers and placed a burden on law enforcement officers who she said are now on "high alert.” 

“This is not a partisan issue,” Hobbs wrote. “These attacks are happening because radical conspiracy theorists have spotted the gaps in our voting rights and election laws and are using loopholes like the Civil War-era Electoral Count Act to manipulate our democracy to their will.”