Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who is term-limited, announced on Wednesday that she is running for Superintendent of Public Instruction, challenging incumbent Tom Horne in the Republican primary. Horne, long considered a moderate Republican, recently angered Republicans with his efforts gutting the state’s nationally renowned Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) program.
Yee (pictured above) said in her announcement,
For nearly 30 years, I’ve fought for Arizona families and children, delivering real results. As an education policy expert, I helped write the laws in the 1990s that made Arizona the nation’s leader in school choice. As a former Chair of the Senate Education Committee, I fought to protect children from woke ideology and the kind of big government overreach we’re seeing from the current State Superintendent. As Treasurer, I delivered billions in historic new funding for Arizona classrooms. And as a mom, I have fought tirelessly to protect parents’ rights to ensure every child is able to have the best educational opportunities, no matter what their zip code. Our state’s children and their families are too important to be left paying the price for petty political games and empty campaign promises.
Arizona children, families and teachers deserve a State Superintendent who will deliver real results, and that includes someone who will fight to protect their educational freedom — I’m that candidate.
SIGN MY PETITION
https://t.co/8g1yKYYdGG pic.twitter.com/CiaOk1YGyQ
— Kimberly Yee (@KimberlyYeeAZ) May 28, 2025
After Horne was exposed for decimating the ESA program, State Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who leads the Arizona Legislature’s Freedom Caucus, set out to find someone to run against him in the Republican primary. He called Horne “the greatest threat to school choice & the ESA program in Arizona.” Hoffman held a press conference with Yee at the state Capitol announcing her campaign.
Tom Horne is the greatest threat to school choice & the ESA program in Arizona.
Tone Horne will lose to the Democrat in the 2026 general election.
Arizona needs a strong, pro-school choice candidate for this very important office.
I’m working on identifying that candidate now. pic.twitter.com/ymiRD8TYkc
— Jake Hoffman (@JakeHoffmanAZ) April 1, 2025
Horne also recently angered the conservative base by opposing President Donald Trump on illegal immigration measures. Trump officials revoked a Biden-era policy that prevented ICE from entering “sensitive locations” such as churches and schools, where criminal illegal immigrants sometimes hide. The Trump administration said the change was made to go after serious criminals, not children.
“If they do that, less kids will come to school,” the state’s top education chief said to the Phoenix New Times. He said “it’s not (a child’s) fault their parents came here illegally.”
In 2009, Horne opposed an effort led by then-Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik to determine whether students were illegal immigrants. Horne introduced a plan in 2007 that would award citizenship to illegal immigrants who finish high school.
His selection of staff has also angered conservatives. He hired former state legislator Michelle Udall, who has a low lifetime rating of 76.99 from the American Conservative Union (ACU). For perspective, Arizona’s moderate Republican former U.S. Senator John McCain had a lifetime rating of 81.37. Udall, who initially ran against Horne in the 2022 primary for schools chief, has been a vocal critic of expanding ESAs. The Maricopa County Republican Committee passed a resolution opposing her reelection campaign due to her hostility to ESAs. She awarded a proclamation to an illegal immigrant group in 2022, praising their activism, and supported a bill that would allow illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition in higher education.
Horne, who previously served as schools chief and then as attorney general, was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for using public office staff to help run his campaign for attorney general.
FBI reports revealed that Horne, who is married, had an extramarital affair with an employee, and FBI agents witnessed him in a hit-and-run near the woman’s residence.
After the scandals, leading Republicans in the state dropped their support for him and endorsed newcomer Mark Brnovich instead, who defeated Horne in the reelection for attorney general.
Yee is coming out strong on the ESA issue. During an interview with KTAR’s Mike Broomhead, Yee said, “I was there in the state legislature when the ESA program began, and back then we always put measures in place for accountability. But that’s the job of the legislature, and that’s the job of those who determine the laws. It is not arbitrary policies that are made out of the superintendent’s office, as we see today.”
Horne is attempting to modify the guidelines for what types of items are reimbursable in the program, citing a handful of unusual requests that were previously rejected. But instead of viewing that as evidence that the program works — it caught any possible fraud from taking place — he is using the unusual requests to justify cutting reimbursements. The ESA program has a fraud rate of only .001 percent.
Yee was the first Asian American woman elected to the Arizona Legislature in the state’s history and the second female Senate Majority Leader in the state’s history, following Sandra Day O’Connor. She accumulated a respectable lifetime rating of 92.47 from the ACU. She sponsored legislation to add financial literacy to the K-12 academic standards in schools and to expand the eligibility requirements for students using ESAs, including those from low-income families.
Yee was the first Asian American elected to statewide office in the state, and the first Chinese American Republican woman ever elected to any major statewide office in the history of the United States.
As state treasurer, she advanced a law that requires high school students to complete a semester of personal money management. As administrator of the statewide AZ529 Education Savings Plan, she grew the state’s assets by historic numbers — 54,178 new accounts.
She sent a letter to Arizona’s two U.S. senators urging them to vote against a bill that would have authorized the IRS to monitor Americans’ deposits or withdrawals of $600 or more. She halted the state’s investments in Unilever due to Ben & Jerry’s boycott of Israel. In addition, she divested from BlackRock due to its CEO Brian Fink pushing a progressive climate agenda that targets U.S. energy production.
Previously, she served as an aide to former California governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson. Yee’s mother is a former Arizona public school teacher who taught elementary school for 38 years in Title I schools in South Phoenix.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to .
Photo “Kimberly Yee” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
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