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.
It was ugly. And she got away with it.
Gallego, for his part, didn’t take the bait. But he also didn’t respond as forcefully as he might have.
Graf often asked substantive follow-up questions of both candidates. But Lake simply took the Steve Bannon approach of flooding the zone with junk (he uses stronger language), making so many rapid-fire insults neither Gallego nor the moderators could respond to all of them. The moderators didn’t fact-check, so it was up to Gallego to call Lake out, but it would have taken all night to do so.
Lake’s approach was clear from the start — to brand Gallego as the “extreme makeover” candidate because of his changing views on some issues. She uttered the phrase several times. She also mentioned a couple of times to viewers that “I was in your home” — a reference to her long career as a local TV anchor, though if you didn’t know that she was, it sounded a little weird.
Gallego, meanwhile, repeatedly said that Lake had “failed the basic test of honestly.” If you’re looking for a meme-able moment, it was when Lake looked at the camera and said, “I’ve never lied to the people of Arizona.”
The Richard Nixon “I am not a crook” vibes were off the charts.
Gallego asked Lake to say whether she lost the 2022 election. She wouldn’t
Gallego asked Lake flat-out to answer whether she lost the 2022 election for governor (she lost, but has never acknowledged it), though the original question was about climate change, so she wisely didn’t answer.
Lake is smooth, obviously comfortable in front of a camera. Gallego, though he is a U.S. representative, is noticeably less so. He did get off one zinger: “You’ve been to Mar-a-Lago more than you’ve been to the border.” Lake’s retort fell flat. “I’ve been to the border probably more times than you’ve been to Arizona.” It was more evidence that the more other politicians try to copy the Trump formula, the more it proves that he’s the only one who can pull it off. (She tried a couple of Trump-like “someone came up to me and said something that conveniently fits perfectly with the political point I am about to make,” but they went nowhere.)
It was also evidence that trying to moderate a debate involving a Trump-lite candidate is difficult. Moderating a debate, period, is difficult. With someone like Lake, who knows how to subvert the rules and then trample all over them (if not always effectively), it becomes more difficult still.
But not impossible. Ted Simons did a masterful job in a recent interview of both pushing back on Lake’s wild claims and accusations and keeping the conversation moving forward.
This wasn’t that. Moderating a debate, especially one like this, is an order of magnitude harder than conducting a one-on-one interview. But for large portions of the debate on Wednesday, Goldstein and Graf just flew a white flag and with few exceptions let Lake go.
Who won the Lake-Gallego debate?
It’s impossible to say who “won” the debate. Minutes after it was over, Lake sent an email saying, “Tonight’s debate was a clear victory for Kari Lake,” because of course she did. I’m surprised she didn’t before it started (that’s the Trump way). Gallego basically had to play defense all night, trying to get a word in edgewise.
Certainly it didn’t leave you wanting another one. It left you wishing there wasn’t one at all. It just felt like everyone lost, all the way around.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
Opinion: ‘Goodness gracious,’ Ted Simons’ Kari Lake interview was great TV
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Opinion: Why the Kari Lake -Ruben Gallego debate was truly awful TV
