Kimberly Yee

The GOP’s Civil War: Republican Rep. Ralph Heap is launching a bid for the Corporation Commission, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. Republican Rep. David Marshall is also expected to run for the utility-regulating board, and the far-right duo plans to challenge slightly more centrist GOP incumbents Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers — who haven’t resisted environmental and diversity efforts as much as the far-right would like. Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman is holding a press conference today to announce the new candidates. State Treasurer Kimberly Yee already announced she’s challenging Tom Horne for Superintendent of Public Instruction and got the Hoffman-backed press conference treatment two weeks ago. While the Freedom Caucus’ battles have been mostly focused against fellow Republicans in the primary, it is also coming up with challengers for the Democratic governor, secretary of state and attorney general. (June 10, 2025)

Hear Yee, Hear Yee: Formerly a beacon of hope for traditional Republicans, Kimberly Yee has realigned herself with the MAGA movement in her bid to become the next school superintendent, Substacker Robert Robb writes. He says Yee’s quick boarding of the MAGA train — and joining Arizona Sen. Jake Hoffman’s beef against current school superintendent Tom Horne — proves she will do anything for another political advancement. “(S)ince pursuing elected office, she has generally struck me as a politician on the make, willing to ride whatever political currents will get her to her next destination,” Robb writes. (June 3, 2025)

Finder’s fee: Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman’s political communications firm has made more than $200,000 from statewide candidates he recruited to run, Axios’ Zach Buchanan reports. So far, Hoffman’s Forged Communications firm received $121,000 from the campaigns of Republican superintendent of public instruction candidate Kimberly Yee and $90,000 from Republican secretary of state candidate Alexander Kolodin. Hoffman said the contenders are “the most qualified candidates in their respective races” and accused Axios of “cooking up wild conspiracy theories about phantom conflicts of interest.” (August 27, 2026)

Not your cookie jar: Three of the state’s top elected officials have started running ads featuring their name and image just in time for this year’s elections, despite it being unlawful to use office funds for political gain, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports. State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne all launched advertisements for statewide initiatives associated with their offices. Horne’s office spent about $180,000 to send signed letters to parents of Arizona’s top students. Fontes went much bigger, spending $1 million to promote a ballot tracking landing page with his face plastered all over it. (July 14, 2026)

The tangled webs we weave: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and his rival for the GOP nomination, Treasurer Kimberly Yee, are going at it over whether Yee supports DEI, which is essentially rat poison for Republican candidacies. Horne says Yee served on a DEI-related committee, but Yee says “that is a lie” and apparently sent Horne a cease-and-desist letter. But Horne brought receipts — a link to this web page. (May 14, 2026)

Quite a coinkydink: It wasn’t too long ago that Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee was railing against Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne for trying to put guardrails on how parents spend school voucher money. But now, after news reports and a state education department audit showed outlandish purchases like lingerie and gas masks, Yee says she’s looking for ways to make sure spending in the state’s school voucher program is above-board, KJZZ’s Bridget Dowd reports. Yee is focusing on the vendor marketplace where parents spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year. She says it’s just a coincidence that her search for a better marketplace comes amid a growing list of scandals about voucher spending, per KTAR’s Shira Tanzer. (March 23, 2026)

A win for school voucher fraud: Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee scored a legal victory when a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled she didn’t have to give 12News detailed spending records from the school voucher program. Judge Christopher Whitten ruled that the line-item transactions didn’t qualify as public records, and gathering all those records would have been unduly burdensome, per 12News. The news station sued Yee after she stopped providing detailed records on voucher spending last year. The station also sued Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne for similar records, where a settlement exposed that vouchers were used for trips to places like New York and Disneyland, Craig Harris reports for 12News. Yee took to Twitter to celebrate and rub salt into 12News’ wound. (July 15, 2026)

A convenient election promo: State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is still relishing her legal win against 12News, which allowed her to withhold detailed transaction information in the state’s school voucher program. Now she’s rubbing it in the face of her rival in the GOP primary, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, who settled his own lawsuit with 12News and agreed to provide detailed info. (July 16, 2026)