LONG BEFORE her reelection campaign began, Attorney General Kris Mayes said she spent a lot of time traveling around the state, listening to people in town-hall meetings. She held a total of 60 of those meetings, which she says is more than any of her predecessors and probably more than any other politician in the state. What she learned from constituents has shaped the focus of many consumer-protection cases her office has filed, and led to the uncovering of $2.5 billion in Medicaid fraud among sober-living homes that preyed on Native Americans and the homeless.
A Prescott native, Mayes has insight into what it’s like to grow up in a rural area and the challenges people living across the state have that don’t apply in the big cities.
“I believe in transparency, and I believe in physically being available to people,” Mayes told 5enses. “I think that’s a lost art in politics, and so I think there’s no substitute for physically getting together with people and hearing their concerns, and that’s something that we’ve made a point of doing. Also, you know, Phoenix isn’t the only game in town.” That’s one of the reasons Mayes has been using all the legal tools available to her to even the playing field for rural Arizonans.
“I’m really proud that we are taking on price-fixing by major corporations in America that is hurting Arizonans,” Mayes said. “We filed cases like the RealPage case, where we are taking on algorithmic price-fixing between RealPage and nine major landlords. We’re taking on basically the entire health-insurance industry, which is using an algorithm to deny care.”
Mayes has been using the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act to take on national corporations and businesses that abuse their power in rural areas, too, and her office has been winning cases.
“I’m really proud that we’ve restored antitrust law in our state in a way that protects consumers, especially in an environment where everybody is experiencing price increases across the board,” Mayes said. “We’ve also used antitrust law to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger, which would have, if it had gone through, combined Fry’s, Safeway and Smith’s, and I think would have been very damaging to consumers in our state.”
Mayes said rural Arizonans would have been hurt the most, especially since in many areas they only have one or two grocery stores to choose from.
During 2025 in our county she used the law to prevent a natural-gas compressor station from being built a third of a mile from Haystack Ranches in Chino Valley, where 66 people live. Mayes met with residents who were outraged that, despite the company having an alternate location farther away, Kinder Morgan won federal approval to place it adjacent to their homes. County Supervisor Chris Kuknyo had reached out to the state to intervene, but was told that it couldn’t supersede the federal law. When Mayes investigated, she learned that the company had described the alternate location as less conducive to the site, but she found that not to be the case. The Arizona State Land Department agreed and withdrew its approval of the proposed site, although it later reapproved it and construction began in January this year.
Mayes also filed a preliminary injunction against a mining company that planned to blow up a mountain adjacent to the Cedar Heights community in Chino Valley. Before that case could be resolved, a resident bought the land from the mining company.
While Mayes, a Democrat, now has a record to show how effective her leadership has been in resolving cases, her tenure started with the equivalent of a bucking bronc ride from the Republican-majority legislature. Republicans were angry over her grand-jury indictment and eventual plea deals with two Cochise County supervisors who refused to release 2022 election results, and continued when she sought to prosecute the fake electors. Republicans investigated her office, finding nothing to pursue. Mayes said she wishes that they cared as much about the people of the state as they do about their party.
“They have not been supportive of the Attorney General’s office, they have not supported law enforcement, they have done or have failed to do a number of things that I think have damaged Arizona, including nothing to protect our water supplies, and they have cut the budget of law enforcement, including my office, they swept funding from the opioid settlements and dumped it into the state prison system, and now they just referred a ballot measure that would strip our unions of the ability to organize, including our police and fire unions, which is just outrageous,” Mayes said.
Tim LaSota, a Republican attorney, criticized her “losing” record in The Capital Times, citing three cases. (LaSota was her previous opponent’s attorney, she points out.) In reality both criminally and civilly. Of the cases against Trump-administration policies, such as tariffs and birthright citizenship, the office has won 80% so far.
Another issue that she finds problematic is the legislature’s refusal to pass reform of the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, where people are fraudulently applying for education vouchers and abusing the program by spending the money on entertainment, luxury goods and other frivolous things.
“Despite evidence of fraud, waste and abuse in that program, this legislature has failed to pass meaningful voucher reform, and I’ll never understand that,” Mayes said. “It’s frustrating, because we are using real law enforcement resources to police the voucher program, and to go after people who
are making up fake birth certificates so they can
draw down vouchers.”
Mayes said she would love to see groundwater use addressed by state law, something the legislature has avoided addressing for decades, despite ongoing issues.
“I’m using nuisance law to protect our groundwater supplies and go after the Saudis in western Arizona, and we held Riverview Dairy and Cochise County accountable for overdrafting the aquifer there,” Mayes said. “(Republicans) make it known that they don’t like the way that I’m running this office, but … we’ll see what the people of Arizona have to say about the way that I do this job. I just don’t think that they’re used to having an active, assertive AG who wants to protect the people of this state, rather than kowtow to corporations, and that’s what they do, but it is definitely not what I do.”
Mayes certainly doesn’t kowtow to anyone, and that includes Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, with whom she’s disagreed publicly on occasion. Mayes argues that she and the governor agree on 98% of policies.
“There are a few things that I have disagreed with her on pretty vehemently and publicly, including the way that she and the legislature treated our opioid funds. As you know they decided to sweep all those, I think now at least 80 million or more dollars, because they swept another $40 million in this legislative session, and instead of spending it on treatment and detox centers and other needs across the state, they dumped it into backfilling the budget deficit at the state prison. So I’m not a shrinking violet, and I’m not going to hide my disagreements just because somebody shares the letter D behind their name,” Mayes said. “That being said, I think she’s done a great job as governor, batting down a whole bunch of terrible stuff coming out of this Republican-led legislature. I can’t imagine what this state would look like if she had lost her election.”
Mayes said she feels confident about her chances of winning reelection, although her philosophy is to run as though she’s behind.
“I don’t want to take anything for granted, but I also feel like we have a really strong record that we’re running on of protecting consumers, going after the Mexican drug cartels and preserving our groundwater supplies for future generations, and so I’m looking forward to contrasting that record and what I want to do as the Attorney General going forward.”
Mayes said her Republican opponents in the primary both said they would withdraw Arizona from all the lawsuits filed against the federal government, which are in the public interest.
“In the case of Warren Peterson, he has said openly that he wants to deport all of the DACA recipients and Dreamers in Arizona,” Mayes said.
“That is absolutely sickening, because these folks are teachers, first-responders, small-business owners, and they are part of the fabric of our state. They came here when they were mostly babies or young children, and to send them back to a country that they do not know for no good reason at all is just the literal definition of insane.”
Mayes, who previously served on the Arizona Corporation Commission as a Republican, switched parties.
“I’m a former Republican, right, and I do not recognize this brand of Republicanism anymore. Neither of (my opponents), I think, are real Republicans, they just sort of want to be Donald Trump’s MAGA lawyer, and I just don’t think that’s what Arizonans want as their attorney general.”
A single mother, Mayes said her daughter Hattie, 13, is now old enough to appreciate the work that she’s doing, but it’s a struggle to balance work and life.
“The more she understands how important this is, the prouder she is,” Mayes said. “But it’s still a huge sacrifice, and I still sometimes wake up in the morning and wonder whether I did the right thing. That’s the candid answer, and I think every mom, every dad who does this feels that way, especially if you’ve got young kids. I always prioritize her, and bring her along with me on the campaign trail whenever she’s willing.”
Mayes’s mother, who still lived in Prescott when she became attorney general, has passed away, but Mayes and her family maintain the home where she was raised. Though she lives in the valley, she frequently visits and still considers Prescott her home town.
