Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs speaking at the 2019 Inauguration of Governor Doug Ducey and statewide officials at the Arizona State Capitol building. ||Creative Commons
By Stacey Barchenger || The Arizona Republic
Arizonans likely will not get a chance to see their candidates for governor in a head-to-head debate this year, bucking a two-decade tradition.
Couching it in terms of wanting to avoid a combative spectacle, Democratic candidate for governor Katie Hobbs’ campaign manager Nicole DeMont on Friday asked for changes to the format of the event co-organized between the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and Arizona PBS.
Hobbs’ campaign first raised concern about debating Republican opponent Kari Lake two weeks ago, and Friday was a deadline to commit to attending.
Instead, Hobbs’ campaign asked that each candidate be alone on stage to take questions for 30 minutes. For the past 20 years, candidates for governor have been onstage simultaneously for an hour to share their policies and respond to criticisms and misinformation sometimes shared by their opponents.
“For weeks, Arizona was ridiculed as clips of the GOP primary debate circulated on social media,” DeMont’s letter reads. “As a candidate and as governor, Sec. Hobbs will never participate in something that will make Arizona the butt of late-night TV jokes and national ridicule. She has too much respect for the people of Arizona.”
Lake, who worked as a television news anchor for 27 years before launching her bid for office, has taunted Hobbs for weeks as afraid to debate her.
“Arizona, Hobbs thinks so little of you that she isn’t even going to campaign and try and earn your vote, but I sure will,” Lake said in a video shared on social media Friday, inviting voters to her campaign events where they could “ask me your tough questions, you can grill me, seriously.”
As of Friday afternoon, the Clean Elections Commission had not made a decision on Hobbs’ requests, saying the proposed changes “would significantly alter the nature of the event” and that it would “review it in due course.”
