Woods said while he opposed the 1996 initiative, he did not think it was right for lawmakers to second-guess what voters had enacted. The measure, approved in 1998, became the Voter Protection Act.
He did support and campaign for some Republicans, including Gov. Jan Brewer in 2010.
Out of office for nearly two decades, Woods formally broke with the GOP in 2018. He said at the time much of that was due to his frustration with the Republican Party and that its members would not stand up to then-President Donald Trump.
He also endorsed Kyrsten Sinema in her 2018 bid for U.S. Senate, when she became the first Democrat elected from Arizona in two decades.
In 2020, Woods weighed his own bid for the U.S. Senate seat formerly occupied by McCain but ended up backing out. That race subsequently was won by Democrat Mark Kelly.
While on the political sidelines since then, Woods stayed involved in politics, becoming a verbal critic of the the state Senate’s audit of the 2020 election returns, calling it “a clown show” and saying those hired “have no idea what they’re doing.”
There are other issues where Woods did not go along with what at the time was the prevailing GOP philosophy.
In 1996, for example, a group launched an initiative drive designed to reduce the flow of people entering the state illegally, with sanctions against employers who hire people not here legally, and mandatory cooperation of local law enforcement with federal immigration officials.
