Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for the Arizona governorship, caused a few disruptions during a candidate town hall, which aired over the weekend.
According to The Hill, Lake’s opponent, Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, was present at the event, but the two candidates weren’t going to debate.
Time and again, Hobbs has refused to debate her opponent during this tight race for governorship and this town hall was no different.
Kari Lake tries confronting Katie Hobbs
There is a procedure in place so that the two candidates won’t have to see each other — Hobbs was supposed to go on stage while Lake sat in a holding room.
But Lake, who claimed to be unaware of the rules, decided to sit in the front row, where Hobbs would see her if she took the stage. She was asked to leave by the moderators.
After sticking around for several minutes and asking Hobbs to come out and debate with her, Lake, the former news anchor, made her way back to the holding room, according to an NBC News report.
One eyewitness, Joe Garcia, an independent voter and the executive director of voter outreach for the group Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, said that the Trump-backed candidate “brought the drama.”
“It was like a telenovela,” he said, noting that Lake’s stunt may have served its purpose, which was to rattle her opponent.
“She was big, brash, and very larger than life, Trump-esque. Anyone who thinks she was there to follow all the rules doesn’t know Kari Lake,” he added.
Why does Katie Hobbs refuse to debate Kari Lake?
During the 2020 election, Arizona flipped blue for the first time since 1996, helping President Joe Biden win, as I previously reported. The state is still neither red nor blue but deeply purple — a trend that is visible in the polls for the governor’s race.
- CBS News/YouGov poll had Hobbs and Lake tied at 49%.
- FiveThirtyEight gave Hobbs a 0.2% lead over Lake.
- But Marist College had Lake at 46% and Hobbs at 45%.
AZ Central pointed out that a televised or livestreamed debate for gubernatorial candidates has been a tradition in Arizona.
Yet, Hobbs has still refused to debate her opponent and blamed Lake for the decision. The editorial also noted that Hobbs refused “to debate her Democratic primary opponent Marco López.”
During an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Hobbs said of a potential debate with Lake, “I have no desire of the spectacle that she’s looking to create.” Hobbs added that she’s satisfied with the state of her campaign, per Politico.
The two candidates sit on opposite sides of the political spectrum — Hobbs, as Arizona’s secretary of state, was responsible for administering the 2020 election that Lake has deemed fraudulent.
Will abortion rule voters’ choice?
As Republicans use inflation and economic hardships as their key issues in this year’s election, Democrats are leaning toward abortion. Hobbs, too, has allowed the issue of reproductive rights to be a focus.
Hobbs is pro-abortion rights and believes that a decision of that nature should rest between a woman and her doctor, without the government’s involvement, according to The New York Times.
A recent Suffolk University/ Arizona Republic poll found that abortion rights are a priority for women voters in Arizona.
In her Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation,” Lake said that she was all for “true choice,” which, according to her, means that a woman should either keep her baby or put it up for adoption, according to The Daily Beast.
“I’m for giving women true choices,” Lake said. “When they walk into an abortion center, they’re only given one choice. They’re not told that you have the choice to keep your baby, and we can help, and here’s how. Or, we can help you find a loving family that will adopt your baby.”