Senate President Warren Petersen is taking a victory lap after a Maricopa County judge on Wednesday ruled that Gov. Katie Hobbs broke the law.

Specifically, that the Democratic governor did an end run on a state law that requires her agency heads to be confirmed by the Republican-run Senate.

“This case,” Petersen crowed, “is a prime example of Democrats weaponizing Arizona’s government for their own political gain and to implement their radical left agenda.”

Actually, this case is a prime example of a bunch of big babies squabbling over who runs the sandbox, more interested in kicking sand in each other’s faces than in working together to build something for the state.

Can you guess who is paying for their respective tantrums?

Hobbs, Senate have been fighting since 2023

The Great Arizona Confirmation Conflict has been raging from the moment Hobbs took office in January 2023.

The prospect of a Democratic governor was enough to spur Petersen to set up a special committee to vet all of Hobbs’ nominees, dumping the decades-long process that assigned standing committees to review candidates appointed to run agencies within the panel’s area of oversight.

Then he tapped the biggest bully in the Legislature, Sen. Jake Hoffman, a fake elector who chairs the far right Arizona Freedom Caucus, to serve as chairman and chief saboteur of his new Senate Committee on Director Nominations.

Hoffman’s hearings were at times more like interrogations than interviews, as Hobbs’ nominees were grilled not just on their qualifications but on their political leanings.

His delight was evident as his panel rejected several of her appointees and declined even to schedule hearings for more than a dozen others.

Not because they weren’t qualified but in retaliation for Hobbs issuing executive orders he didn’t like.

In the end, the Senate confirmed just six of Hobbs’ nearly two dozen nominees last year.

Stymied on appointments, Hobbs went around

Hoffman and his fellow henchmen on the committee chased away a clearly qualified candidate to run the Department of Health Services and rejected a former Democratic legislator nominated to run the Registrar of Contractors because they didn’t like his politics.

Hobbs withdrew a third nominee amid questions about his fitness to run the Department of Child Safety.

Meanwhile, 13 agency heads were left twisting in the wind. Never mind the damage done when we have no confirmed agency directors to oversee the state’s critical needs, from social services and prisons to public health, nursing home oversight and child safety.

So, Hobbs drew up a new plan, withdrawing her 13 still-unconfirmed agency nominees last fall and reappointing them as “executive assistant directors” who need no Senate approval.

“It is clear that this Committee is being used as a weapon, wielded for the personal whim of a few legislators,” she wrote in a September letter to Petersen, notifying him of her plan.

Hobbs was clearly thumbing her nose at both state law and the Senate, but she’s not the first governor to do it.

Republican Gov. Fife Symington pulled a similar maneuver in 1991 when the then-Democratic Senate refused to confirm his nominee to head the Department of Administration. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey appointed an interim director to run DHS and Republican senators never raised a stink.

Governor was wrong. She broke the law

Hobbs did it and the Republican-run Senate hit her with a lawsuit, filed by a pair of private lawyers paid (by us) to sue (us).

“Katie Hobbs has demonstrated a childish refusal to work with anyone not in the far-left political spectrum, and a total disdain for following the law,” Hoffman whined when the lawsuit was filed in December.

What we needed, of course, was not a lawsuit but a ceasefire. What we needed was for our enemy combatants to grow the heck up and find a compromise.

Vote the GOP out: That’s the only way to fix vouchers

Hobbs should have followed state law, which requires her to promptly nominate agency directors who are then subject to the consent of the Senate.

And Petersen should have given his hitman Hoffman the hook and named a new chairman, somebody more interested in the smooth operation of the state than in sticking it a governor he doesn’t like.

Instead, Hobbs commenced with her end run and Petersen sued and to no one’s surprise, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott A. Blaney on Wednesday ruled that Hobbs “improperly, unilaterally appointed de facto directors for these 13 agencies.”

He set another hearing for later in the summer, giving “these co-equal branches of government” time to meet and try to resolve their dispute.

How both sides can resolve this mess

For now, Petersen is taking his victory lap. He was, after all, right on the law. The Senate is charged with consenting to a governor’s choice to lead a state agency.

But Hobbs is also right on the need for stability in state government. You can’t run a state with what amounts to temps. Not well, anyway.

You certainly can’t expect to attract the best and the brightest, knowing that a run through Hoffman’s gauntlet awaits them.

The compromise seems obvious, as it did before the enemy combatants spent out money to go to court.

Hobbs should send over her nominees for Senate approval as the law requires.

And Petersen should pull the plug on Hoffman. Find a fair-minded senator to oversee confirmations.

Someone more interested in serving the state than serving his or her own self interest.

If you don’t have any of those, Sen. Petersen, then perhaps our problems are bigger than a bunch of unconfirmed agency heads.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Senate president need to grow the heck up