["Environmental Policy and Governance, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis article examines Arizona as a critical case of climate obstruction, where incumbent utilities and allied climate countermovement (CCM) actors have long constrained state‐level climate and energy governance. The CCM is a coordinated network of corporations, think tanks, and other groups obstructing climate action across scales. While scholarship has examined CCM dynamics nationally, few studies probe subnational contexts where partisan contestation and institutional structures shape climate governance. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 37 key actors including policymakers, regulators, utility representatives, and advocacy leaders, the study uses Lukes' three‐dimensional theory of power as an interpretive lens to examine how overt political influence, institutional agenda control, and ideological framing converge in Arizona's energy politics. Findings reveal how utilities and allied actors wield campaign finance, lobbying, and ballot spending (first dimension); exercise procedural gatekeeping and discursive pressure to exclude climate from agendas (second dimension); and deploy affordability and reliability narratives to delimit what is politically feasible (third dimension). Importantly, these dynamics are not merely imposed but normalized through institutional routines and long‐standing assumptions, embedding obstruction within the fabric of governance itself. By situating these dynamics within a subnational political context, the study contributes to growing scholarship on how climate governance is shaped by institutional structures and coalitional influence at the state level.\n"]