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The Republican-controlled Senate voted late Tuesday along party lines to deny confirmation to the Democratic governor’s choice to head the Department of Housing, a role Serviss has served in since 2023 despite not having Senate confirmation.

Queen Creek Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman, who led the move to oust her, said Serviss proved to be a bad choice.

Exhibit No. 1 was evidence that she had copied — Hoffman used the word “plagiarism’’ — in her prior position as head of the nonprofit ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Housing Coalition when sending letters of support for policy changes at the federal level.

Serviss told lawmakers it was common practice among advocacy groups. But Hoffman said she also had lifted whole paragraphs, without attribution, from Bloomberg ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.

Her problems multiplied after she became director when it was revealed the Department of Housing made a $2 million wire transfer to people pretending to represent a nonprofit organization.

State auditors blamed that on the agency’s failure to develop protocols. Hobbs’ press aide Christian Slater said Serviss made the necessary changes to prevent a repeat.

Slater also said the loss was covered by insurance — but the state is self-insured, meaning the money was replaced by other state funds.

Due to a stalemate between Republican senators and Hobbs, Serviss had been allowed to serve as director since 2023 without confirmation — until Tuesday’s vote to reject her.

In a written statement, she detailed what she said were accomplishments by the agency under her direction. And she said she will remain “a leader in the fight to end homelessness and address our state’s affordable housing crisis.’’

Slater had no immediate answer to the question of whether Hobbs will keep her in the administration in some fashion.

The vote to oust Serviss came over the objections of several Democrats who praised her accomplishments in dealing with what has become an increasingly difficult situation of making affordable housing available.

As to the complaint of plagiarism, Tempe Democratic Sen. Mitzi Epstein said Republican senators were guilty of a double standard, as she said lawmakers themselves — she did not name names — copy statutes from other states word for word and pass them off as their own ideas.

She also said that during the administration of Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Hobbs’ predecessor, the Senate approved his nominees without question, including people Epstein said later had to leave because they were “disgraced.’’

Hoffman, however, said there was more than enough reason to conclude Serviss lacked the skills to run the agency.

None of this is occurring in a vacuum. Prior to Hobbs taking office in 2023, gubernatorial nominations were handled in quite a different fashion.

They were sent to whichever Senate committee appeared to have expertise in that area. So, for example, someone to head the Department of Financial Institutions would go to whatever committee reviewed banking legislation.

That all changed with the 2022 election of a Democratic governor and the decision by Republican Senate President Warren Petersen to form a special Committee on Director Nominations. He appointed Hoffman, who has made no secret of his feelings about Hobbs, to head the committee.

Hoffman said the panel “goes to great lengths’’ to do a thorough vetting of candidates, saying that’s part of the Senate’s constitutional role to “advise and consent’’ on gubernatorial nominees. He said the findings of his committee — and the nominees it has rejected — prove that Hobbs was not properly screening those she chose.

In 2023, with Hoffman scheduling a hearing on only a few of her nominees to head state agencies, Hobbs executed a maneuver to have all of them “demoted’’ to deputy directors, positions that do not need Senate confirmation. But with no actual directors at each agency, she gave them the title of “cabinet executive officers.’’

The Senate sued.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled that Hobbs was “arguably’’ within her powers to withdraw the names of those she had tapped as directors after she could not get them confirmed.

Where she broke the law, he ruled, was in giving those deputies the exact same duties and powers they would have had as Senate-confirmed directors.

The governor eventually gave up and resubmitted all of the names in January, including that of Serviss.