In The West’s Water War, Arizona's Governor Is Betting On Trump — And Iran

Many Democratic governors are hitting President Donald Trump on the Iran war, but Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs sees it as an opportunity.

Where Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania are slamming the gas price spikes stemming from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, Hobbs is touting Arizona defense contractors' work on Tomahawk missiles that the U.S. military deploys in the conflict.

Her aim: to get Trump to intervene on behalf of the state in the West's biggest water war.

“This administration’s goals rely on Arizona receiving our fair share of Colorado River water. It relies on Arizona-made missiles, Arizona-made semiconductors and Arizona-grown agriculture,” Hobbs told an audience of business leaders during a keynote address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s infrastructure conference last month, held just steps from the White House.

It's a delicate argument for the swing-state incumbent who's up for reelection this year — but a savvy one with both a practical and a political upside, observers say. By touting the importance of the Colorado River to the defense industry, Hobbs is seeking to court the president on a vital policy decision for her state, while not wading too far into the national debate over the war in one of the country’s most hotly contested states.

“The idea that she could put Colorado River water together with national defense and national security and the Arizona angle is just a wonderfully crafted political and campaign tool," said Stan Barnes, a former Republican state senator turned GOP consultant and political strategist. “The No. 1 objective is to signal to the broad electorate that she’s doing something about the Colorado River situation. Everyone in Arizona is on the same team on that subject.”

Hobbs’s pitch to Trump on the river is garnering a wide base of support within Arizona. A phalanx of state and local officials from both parties, business leaders and even her electoral challengers are joining in the effort.

"It’s the two birds with one stone analogy," Barnes said. "To cover two important constituencies with one simple concept and tying together the emergency of the Colorado River, the Iranian war and getting Donald Trump’s attention."

At the same time, Hobbs is also expressing openness to temporarily lowering gas taxes to reduce the war-imposed burden of higher oil prices, unlike other Democratic governors,

A Hobbs spokesperson said her aim is threefold.

"Governor Hobbs isn't concerned about politics, she wants to do what’s right for Arizona, the Colorado River, and America," spokesperson Christian Slater said in an email. "She sees an opportunity for the Trump administration to advance a Colorado River deal that strengthens domestic manufacturing, supports national security, and onshores mission-critical supply chains, while also delivering for Arizona’s long-term water security."

First in line for cuts

Significant cuts in Colorado River water deliveries would deliver real economic pain to the booming Sunbelt state where affordability is a major 2026 campaign issue. This stems from the fact that the canal system that delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson, and the state’s blossoming technology corridor would be among the first in line for cuts when the rules that govern access to the drought-stricken waterway expire this fall.

The seven Western states that share the river’s flows have been at an impasse over which should reduce their offtake.

Legally, Hobbs has the weakest hand in the fight. But she is playing the cards she has — Arizona’s swing-state status and its concentration of high-tech manufacturing and defense industries cherished by the Trump administration — as aggressively as possible to try to lure the president to intercede on the state’s behalf.

“With the ongoing conflict in Iran and the decimation of America’s missile supply, Arizona’s massive aerospace and defense industry is more important than ever,” Hobbs said at the Chamber event. “We literally build the defense systems that keep Americans and our allies safe.”

So far, Trump’s Interior Department has taken a hands-off approach to the regional water brawl, and where it has weighed in, its moves have favored Arizona’s upstream opponents: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The latter two are the region’s politically reddest states, with powerful senators who hold leadership positions on Capitol Hill.

The White House declined to respond to questions about whether it would consider intervening in the water fight.

In a statement, Interior didn’t address questions about Arizona’s arguments but said it will make decisions relying on the laws, compacts and court rulings that make up the “Law of the River” — a framework that if strictly followed would require Arizona to take a high proportion of cuts.

“The Department continues to make management decisions for the river’s future while adhering to this established framework, and the Department remains open to consensus proposals from Arizona and other Basin States that can help address the unique conditions poor hydrology causes in each State,” Interior said.

The pitch

Arizona’s approach carries risks. The White House could hesitate to deliver Hobbs a win in an election year, particularly as the state’s interests in the water fight are currently aligned with California — and therefore, one of Trump’s favorite foils, Newsom.

Some Democrats, too, could be turned off if Hobbs even suggests support for the Iran war.

But Barnes said Hobbs’ arguments walk a fine line.

"If she were to come out and do cartwheels supportive of the president in Iran, I think that would be politically not that smart for her reelection," Barnes said. "So she’s not doing that. But she’s touching the topic by relating it to the Colorado River water, which is smart."

Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Danny Seiden argued that protecting Arizona’s water isn’t about Hobbs’s political fate.

“It's not about delivering the governor a win, it’s about delivering the Trump economy a win,” he said.

As for Newsom, Seiden — who served as chief of staff to Hobbs’ Republican predecessor, Gov. Doug Ducey — pointed out that the upstream states have their own gubernatorial liability: Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat. Trump and Polis have been feuding for months, initially over the fate of a Colorado county clerk who has been serving a nine-year sentence for tampering with voting machines after spreading conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 election loss.

In fact, Trump issued the first veto of his second term for an unrelated Colorado water project that Congress had approved unanimously, calling Polis a “bad governor.”

Seiden argued that White House intervention in the water fight could be a political win for Trump in that rivalry.

“It’s a win for the President to come in and say, ‘Gov. Polis … can’t manage his water, can’t make good decisions, is destroying his state, so I have to come in like a parent and settle it,’” Seiden said.

Feeding into Arizona’s political strategy is an aggressive effort by one of the state’s most powerful water entities to raise public alarm about the looming Colorado River cuts.

The Central Arizona Project — the 336-mile-long canal that delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, as well as industries and tribes in the center part of the state — launched a major publicity campaign last month arguing that Arizona is being unfairly targeted in the water negotiations.

As part of the blitz, the project ran a commercial that looked more like a campaign attack ad, featuring the state Capitol building in the sights of a gun, on local television stations during Olympic figure skating and hockey events. Interior’s current plan would “cripple our state, flatten our economy and weaken our nation’s defense,” the ad warned.

Brenda Burman, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, said she launched the campaign because the options that the Trump administration put out in January for managing the waterway were all unfair to Arizona.

“It is not a future that can be acceptable in Arizona. And so we wanted to get the word out,” she said. “It's important that the regular population understand what is at stake.”

Burman also has some special connections to the Trump administration. During the president’s first term, she served as the top Western water official at his Interior Department. The lobbying firm launched by her boss from that time — former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt — now represents the Central Arizona Project in Washington.

The best messengers

Although the Trump administration has thus far tried to leave it to the states to sort out the water fight, it will be all but impossible for Interior to avoid the issue much longer.

This winter’s hot, dry conditions across the West have sent water levels at one of the system’s main reservoirs plunging towards crisis levels, threatening to cut off the production of hydropower that is crucial to the Western grid and potentially endangering the integrity of the dam itself.

Without a state deal in hand, Interior has said it will finalize its plan for unilaterally managing the river this summer, which would almost certainly set off a high-stakes Supreme Court battle.

Now, Arizona power players are preparing to up the pressure on the White House as the decision deadline looms. That could involve tapping executives from tech companies with operations in central Arizona to weigh in with the president’s top tech advisors, acknowledged Seiden with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

The Phoenix area has been dubbed “Silicon Desert.” Among the companies with a significant presence there are Intel, Amazon and Microsoft. More than 160 data centers are operating in the region, powering the American artificial intelligence industry that the president has sought to boost.

The state is also home to TSMC, whose Phoenix facility manufactures the country’s most advanced semiconductors and has been heralded by Trump as a success story in his bid to onshore vital supply chains. The company declined to comment about its interest in Colorado River issues.

“You want to make sure if you have a very specific ask, you have the right messenger, you have the right person. And obviously, that has mattered in the Trump administration,” Seiden said. “So conversations about who that is and lining that up are ongoing.”

River experts say that a move by the Trump administration to blunt the impacts on Arizona and put some of the pain of supply cuts on its upstream neighbors could kick-start negotiations among the states to come up with a water-sharing deal on their own.

"We know we’re going to lose a lot of water, it just can’t be this much, and it can’t be with Upper Basin states having no uncompensated commitments,” said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law at Arizona State University and legal counsel to the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association.

If the Trump administration put out a plan that made those changes, he argued, “that might be scary enough to have the Upper Basin states say: 'We have something to lose. Let’s come back to the table.’”

But just in case, Arizona is also very publicly wielding its biggest stick: the threat of a protracted and costly court battle. Late last month, Hobbs’s administration announced that it has hired a top-tier international law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, to represent it should the water fight head to court.

And as the war with Iran continues, Hobbs's public line of argument only grows more potent.

"The portion of the electorate that Katie Hobbs would like to have to seal up a reelection bid is supportive of what the president is doing in the Middle East," Barnes said. "That’s everyone from the Raytheon employees to Trump MAGA to good old unaffiliated Americans who don’t trust Iran and think this president is finally doing something about that."