The congressman who wants to be governor did not merely make the case against Hobbs. He made the case against his own party’s frontrunner — and, unintentionally, against himself.
In a kooky , meandering homily, Schweikert told the the Quail Creek he knows about a drug that will cure homelessness, and that state health policy should be driven by Pokemon Go.
The GOP nightmare spoken out loud
He told the Republican Club that Arizona Republicans are in danger of nominating a candidate who cannot win statewide.
“As of a week ago,” he said, “the latest modeling and polling says if the election were today and Andy Biggs was the nominee, we do lose, but we also lose the legislature.”
Republicans have not elected a governor in Arizona since Doug Ducey won in 2018. They lost the U.S. Senate seats. They lost the Secretary of State’s office. They lost the Attorney General’s office. They lost the governor’s office to Hobbs in 2022 after nominating Kari Lake, another Trump-backed MAGA celebrity who turned grievance politics into a statewide losing strategy. Now Schweikert is warning that Biggs — a Freedom Caucus hardliner and Trump favorite — could repeat the same GOP disaster in 2026.
“We live on a razor’s edge,” Schweikert said, pointing to the GOP’s fragile control of the Legislature. Then he took the knife and turned it toward Biggs.
Schweikert’s argument is simple: Biggs can thrill the MAGA base, but he cannot win the voters Republicans need in November. Schweikert said independents now outnumber Republicans in Arizona. He said Republicans cannot survive a top-of-ticket candidate who frightens swing voters.
He even acknowledged what Democrats have been saying for years: Arizona Republicans keep nominating candidates who are too extreme, too angry and too trapped in the MAGA echo chamber to win statewide.
“MAGA wins primaries, but not general elections,” Schweikert said when a Republican voter invoked Trump’s endorsement power.
Democrats don’t need to say Republicans are in trouble. Schweikert is doing it for them.
Because Schweikert is right about one thing: Trump can dominate Republican primaries while leaving his party with damaged goods in general elections. Arizona voters have already seen this movie: election denial, culture-war rage, attacks on voting rights, obsession with conspiracies, then a defeat in November — followed by years of whining that the election was stolen.
Wacky campaign promises
But Schweikert’s problem is that he is not exactly the clean, steady alternative he imagines himself to be. His wacky pitch was less a disciplined campaign message than a political yard sale: part budget seminar, part confessional, part TED Talk gone off the rails.
In the middle of a discussion about swing voters, he suddenly:
- Veered into a story about driving his wife’s “fancy Tesla,” complaining that “they don’t have spare tires.”
- Said he and his wife, both 64, adopted a three-year-old who is now featured in campaign posters.
- While answering serious questions about water security and the Colorado River crisis, he paused to declare that left-handed people are “always very smart,” because four of his five “freaks of nature” friends are left-handed.
- He introduced himself as a math prophet trapped in a “math-free zone.”
- He joked that there are “rules” against strangling fellow members of Congress.
He wandered from Medicare fraud to some synthetic drug that will cure homelessness. He suggested the state could require people to take it if they want publicly funded rehab again. “You don’t have to,” he said. “But if you want us to pay for your rehab again, maybe you can work with us.” He actually floated the idea of tying life-or-death treatment to mandatory medication.
At one point, Schweikert proposed that government agencies should merge so they can share cars, like “Uber for earth graders.” At another, he suggested Medicaid recipients struggling with obesity should get food boxes instead of EBT cards because, in his words, “we hand them an EBT card to go get onion rings at Jack in the Box.”
Pokémon Go health policy
Schweikert praised the online game as a model for health policy. His idea: gamify public health so people get tokens for taking insulin, going to urgent care instead of the emergency room and losing weight.
Schweikert is what passes for visionary Republican governance in 2026: take away food choice, hand out tokens and cite Pokémon Go as a public-health breakthrough.
Schweikert repeatedly insisted that “prosperity is moral.” But his vision of morality is cold, technocratic and judgmental. He talks about “brothers and sisters” while comparing struggling Arizonans to cost centers. He speaks in the language of compassion, then pivots to spreadsheets. He says the state must help people, then suggests the government should police their groceries. He denounces bureaucracy, then proposes a web of apps, models, audits, algorithms and compliance schemes that would put bureaucrats in people’s kitchens, clinics, rehab centers and building sites.
Spreadsheet paternalism
And for all his self-branding as the “math guy,” Schweikert is also a politician with baggage. Schweikert had to pay $175,000 in fines for his conviction of 11 House ethics violations related to campaign-finance fraud and misuse of taxpayer funds. He may present himself as the adult in the room. However, he is still a longtime Washington Republican who voted for the same party agenda that exploded deficits, protected the wealthy and threatened the programs Arizona seniors rely on.
Schweikert said Arizona Republicans know they are in trouble. Schweikert said the governor’s race will be the top of the ticket in 2026 because there is no presidential race nor a U.S. Senate race.
Biggs wins, Democrats get a hard-right MAGA candidate tied to Trump, election denial and the Freedom Caucus. If Schweikert wins, Democrats get a Washington insider with ethics baggage, a record of unpopular Republican votes and a campaign style that ricochets from actuaries to sheep to Pokémon Go.
Advantage to Governor Katie Hobbs
Meanwhile, Hobbs can run as the steady alternative to Republican chaos. She does not need to win a MAGA purity contest. She does not need to explain why her party’s frontrunner might destroy its legislative majority. She does not need to pitch a “revolutionary” state government with an app for graders, an app for permits, an app for inspections and a token system for Medicaid patients.
She can simply point to the Republican candidates and ask Arizona voters: Do you really want these loony people running the state?
Schweikert’s own remarks handed Democrats the script. The GOP is divided. Biggs is dangerous. Schweikert is desperate. Every minute Republican activists spend fighting each other is another reminder that Arizona has moved on from the politics of MAGA grievance.
Schweikert’s stump speech veered from Jack in the Box onion rings to Pokémon GO to algae cow feed, and demeaning low-income Arizonans. Democrats don’t have to stretch to make the case against him — they just have to let Schweikert keep talking, and let Arizona’s increasingly independent electorate decide whether this is really the vision they want running the state.
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OK, I looked it up on AI – gotta be true there, you know. I prompted it with “Show me a picture of a wackdoddle.” I gave me a picture of Schweikert.