The only debate between the Arizona candidates for U.S. Senate quickly turned into the Kari Lake Show on Wednesday, Oct. 9, and the moderators seemed powerless to stop it.
Lake, the Republican candidate, and Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate, met for the first and only time . It was frustrating TV, maddening in terms of what it could have been and what it was.
Though given the way Lake treats these kinds of things, I’m not sure what else we could have expected.
They covered a variety of issues — the border (for nearly a half-hour of the hour debate), reproductive rights, the economy, election integrity. Yet you walked away feeling like you hadn’t learned much. In part this is because less than a month before the election there probably isn’t much new to learn.
Showdown: Senate rivals Kari Lake and Ruben Gallego clash on border security and abortion in debate
Lake again went Trump-style, with little success
But it was really due to the way Lake conducted herself. It took her about a question and a half to realize that moderators Steve Goldstein, a longtime former KJZZ host, and Nohelani Graf, a former ABC 15 anchor, either wouldn’t or couldn’t stand in her way as she followed the debate tactics Donald Trump (her “good friend,” she said) and repeatedly went over her time limit and talked over Gallego, often resorting to personal attacks.