PHOENIX (AP) — Republican candidates Kari Lake, Karrin Taylor Robson, Paola Tulliani Zen and Scott Neely took to the debate stage Wednesday evening in the race to become the GOP candidate for Arizona governor.
Lake and Robson are largely considered the front-runners in the race. The candidates discussed a variety of topics - including education, the economy as well as the 2020 election results.
Lake, who received former president Donald Trump's endorsement for the role, was especially vocal about the results of the election.
"[President Joe Biden] lost the election and he shouldn't be in the White House," Lake said.
Lesser-known candidates Scott Neely and Paola Tulliani Zen agreed with Lake that the election was “corrupt.”
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.
The race is taking clearer shape with one week to go before early voting begins. Polling has shown Lake leading for the entirety of the campaign, but former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon's decision Tuesday to drop out could shake things up and give Robson a boost in a one-on-one race against Lake. Salmon threw his support to Robson hours before the debate on Wednesday.
All four contenders began throwing barbs almost immediately and continued throughout the hourlong debate. The candidates talked over and constantly interrupted one another.
“We need a leader with a record of accomplishment, not a career talker with the teleprompter,” Robson began, taking a dig at Lake's 27-year career in television news. She repeatedly called her leading rival “Fake Lake.”
“We do need someone who’s a grownup, and someone who calls names is not a grownup,” Lake said later.
Under repeated questioning from debate moderator Ted Simon of Arizona PBS, Robson agreed that she does not represent a radical change from outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. She said Arizona has posted a strong recovery from the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic and spoke supportively of his COVID-19 policies.
“In hindsight, when you see that he angered as many people on the left as the right, he probably got it about right,” Robson said.
Lake, by contrast, said Ducey kept businesses closed for far too long and should not have allowed local governments to require masks.
“Eventually we realized that this is destroying our economy, hurting people and we didn’t need to have those masks,” Lake said.
Salmon dropped out this week after determining he had no chance of pulling out a victory in the GOP primary, and said he did not want to drain votes from Robson.
“I'm going to work my tail off to get Karrin Taylor Robson elected as governor of Arizona because I actually believe that with all the challenges that we have as a state ... we can't afford to get it wrong," he said on KTAR radio’s Mike Broomhead show.
Salmon ticked off major campaign issues such as border security, K-12 education and water supplies that he said were “incredibly existential issues to us as a state.”
"And I believe that we've got to have somebody that actually has a track record of getting things done," Salmon said. “And somebody we can trust as a real true conservative like Karrin Taylor Robson.”
Term limits bar Ducey from running again in 2022. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and former Nogales Mayor Marco Lopez are seeking the Democratic nomination.
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Austin "AJ" Janos is a producer for KGUN 9. He graduated in 2022 from the University of Arizona where he worked at UATV3 while attending college. Share your story ideas and important issues with AJ by emailing aj.janos@kgun9.com.
