B.S.! Maybe Democrats think that. I live in AZ and I'm a conservative and I do not think Babbitt was "one of the better governors of Arizona", and I have never ever heard of any other AZ conservatives who think that.
Babbitt was in some ways a screwball but he was an intelligent screwball who laid the foundations for Arizona as it is today. I wish that he had been on our side or that we had a conservative counterpart.