Democrat Katie Hobbs won’t debate her opponent in Arizona’s race for governor, yet Republican Kari Lake tried to make it happen at a candidate town hall that organizers say she disrupted.
Under the agreed-upon rules for the pre-recorded event, which was taped Monday and airs at 7 p.m. Saturday Arizona time, the candidates were not supposed to be onstage at the same time and Hobbs was supposed to go first.
But a problem arose before Hobbs even took the stage: Lake was sitting in the front row, in a direct line of sight at where her opponent would sit.
As a crowd of more than 200 watched, organizers said Lake was supposed to be in a hold room under the rules, a copy of which they refused to provide to NBC News. Lake protested, saying she was unaware of that rule and said Hobbs should come out and debate her. Hobbs didn’t.
After several minutes, Lake complied, leaving behind her campaign surrogate, Mexican telenovela star Eduardo Verástegui.
“Kari Lake brought along a Mexican telenovela star and she brought the drama. It was like a telenovela,” said Joe Garcia, an independent voter and the executive director of voter outreach for the group Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, which was a co-sponsor of the event along with the state and national Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
Garcia’s description of the scene matched the account of five eyewitnesses — including representatives from both campaigns — as well as video provided by Lake’s campaign that showed the Republican pleading her case with moderator León Krauze, a Univision News anchor, and event producer Mary Rabago.
Garcia believes Lake’s actions were a stunt designed to rattle Hobbs, which he said appeared to work, because the Democrat gave an uneven performance in his view.
Of Lake, Garcia said: “She rattled 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.”
The scene was emblematic of the contrasting styles of Lake and Hobbs: Lake is a former local TV anchor, while Hobbs is the elected secretary of state in Arizona, one of the nation’s most competitive swing states. One observer of the town hall described the race as a clash between “an NPR Democrat and a Trump Republican.”
Hobbs’ campaign said in September that debates were a no-go, pointing to Lake’s penchant for causing “chaos” and her embrace of false conspiracy theories of a stolen election. Lake has repeatedly called Hobbs a “coward” for her refusal to share the debate stage and points out that Hobbs also refused to debate Democratic primary rivals.
Reached for comment about the incident, both campaigns issued statements to NBC News about the forum that echoed their candidates’ talking points about one another, with Lake questioning Hobbs’ courage and Hobbs denouncing Lake for causing chaos.
TV viewers won’t be able to see the spectacle that unfolded at Monday’s forum. It was pre-recorded to give Univision time to translate the event into Spanish before it airs Saturday night.
The English-language version is scheduled to be webcast online by Univision, which forbade audience members from recording the event on video.
But Verástegui did uploaded video to social media of the pre-event back-and-forth between Lake, Krauze and Rabago, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter on the record.
The video was subsequently deleted from social media.
Later, when Lake was onstage for her one-on-one with Krauze, an event staffer suspected the candidate’s husband was recording another video with her security volunteer, Scott Masino, a local sheriff’s deputy volunteering his time for the candidate who relayed the story to NBC News.
Masino told NBC News they weren’t recording, but a Phoenix police officer was called over to make sure.
“This is ridiculous,” Masino said. “She has a police…
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