2026 Election: Kimberly Yee running for AZ schools superintendent

PHOENIX - Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee announced on May 28 that she will challenge incumbent Tom Horne for the Republican nomination as Superintendent of Public Instruction in the 2026 election.

Who is Kimberly Yee?:

Yee was first elected as the state treasurer in 2018, and won re-election in 2022 after dropping out of the race for governor.

Per her biography on the Arizona State Treasury's website, Yee is the first Asian American to be elected to a statewide office in Arizona's history, and was also the first Asian American woman elected to the state legislature, having been elected in 2010 and serving there for eight years.

Under Arizona's constitution, no one can be elected to more than two consecutive terms as state treasurer, as well as a number of other state offices. Once they serve two consecutive terms, they must sit out for at least four years before they can run again. Therefore, Yee can't run again for state treasurer in 2026.

What Yee Said:

While speaking at a news conference on May 28, Yee said she will partner with parents to protect and preserve educational opportunities for all, and work to strengthen school choice options.

"Our state's children and their families are too important to be left paying the price for petty political games and empty campaign rhetoric," she said.

Yee's announcement comes as state leaders, including Republicans, have grown increasingly frustrated with Horne's support of the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) school voucher program, which has now grown to cost the state $1 billion a year. ESAs allow parents in Arizona to send their students to private or charter schools. The public money can also be used by homeschool families who itemize their education-related expenses.

The other side:

Horne has said that in order for the ESA program to survive, there needs to be accountability with expenses.

Under Horne, the department has established two principles for approving a requested purchase: it must be for a legitimate educational purpose, and it must be at a reasonable cost.

"Believe it or not, I got an application for a vasectomy testing kit. A vasectomy testing kit for funds that are supposed to be for education," said Horne. "If I had adopted a Jake Hoffman - Kim Yee philosophy and granted all those things, it would be big news. The public would have reacted, and the survivability of the program would be in doubt."

Some parents have objected to their requests being denied, appealing the decisions to a state board that has ruled against all of them. Meanwhile, Some Republicans like Yee and state lawmaker Jake Hoffman are calling this approach executive overreach full of bureatratic red tape, and say a change is needed.

Yee did not directly answer a reporter's question on whether she supports any limits to the ESA program. Meanwhile, Hoffman pushed the focus to public school spending when he spoke to reporters, claiming there is plenty of wasteful spending there.