Republicans in Arizona are being asked to decide exactly how much experience someone needs practicing law to be the attorney general, the head of the state's largest law firm.
But the two contenders debating Thursday night could not even agree on who has actual, relevant experience — and whether that matters.
Rodney Glassman cited his time as an attorney in the military, where he said he prosecuted soldiers and airmen in military courts for committing crimes. He also has been in private practice, and said that as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force reserves, he supervises more than two dozen lawyers at Luke Air Force Base.
His opponent, Warren Petersen, has had a law license for less than three years. He said, though, he actually has prosecuted cases in Arizona courts, albeit as a law school student working in the Scottsdale City Attorney's Office.
Petersen, however, called himself the “de facto attorney general.”
He said that, as Senate president, he is involved in managing more than 100 cases in which the legislature is either a party or has filed legal briefs. Still, he is not the actual lawyer going into court for any of those cases.
But Petersen says that doesn't matter. He said what the attorney general does comes down to “leadership, management and policy.”
But much of that debate over experience got lost in Petersen's repeated personal attacks on Glassman, calling him a “trust-fund baby” and referring to his foe as “a charlatan,” “a joke” and “a criminal.” That often left Glassman saying that various rumors about him — never specifically mentioned by either side during the hour-long debate — are not just false but being promoted by Petersen's allies.
Glassman's own political record, however, did leave him open to attack.
Petersen pointed out that Glassman has run for office multiple times in the past two decades. And his only success was that far back when he served on the Tucson city council, as a Democrat.
There was an unsuccessful bid in 2010, again as a Democrat, to oust incumbent Republican Sen. John McCain. Only in 2015 did he switch parties — Glassman said he did so when Trump announced he was running for president — but he still lost bids for corporation commission, Maricopa County assessor, and the 2022 GOP primary for attorney general.
Glassman responded by seeking to denigrate Petersen's experience.
“My primary opponent is a part-time legislator, a part-time Realtor, and got his law license just 28 months ago,” he said.
“He's never filed a lawsuit as a lawyer, he's never prosecuted a criminal as a lawyer, and he's never worked in a law office,” Glassman continued. “And if Republicans nominate someone to run against Kris Mayes this November with zero experience, all we're going to get is four more years of Kris Mayes.”
The City of Scottsdale confirmed that Petersen participated in nine trials in city court while assigned to the Scottsdale Attorney’s Office through the Prosecution Clinic at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
Petersen said the nine cases he did handle as an intern for Scottsdale do count as criminal experience, even if they were for misdemeanors.
“It means that I have prosecuted nine more trials than Rodney Glassman and Kris Mayes,” he said. Mayes also has no trial experience.
Officials with Luke Air Force Base told KJZZ that Glassman is the “IMA to the Staff Judge Advocate,” who fills in when the Staff Judge Advocate is absent, and “actively participated” in cases at the base as a supervising attorney.
After squabbling over their resumes, Petersen said his limited trial experience is of no import.
“That is not what the attorney general does,” he said.
“This is a management and policy office,” Petersen said. “I'm the only candidate with extensive policy experience.”
There were other flashpoints.
Steve Goldstein, moderating the televised debate for the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, asked both if they believe that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
“The 2020 election was certified for Joe Biden,” Glassman responded.
“Was there fraud in the 2020 election?” he continued. “Unfortunately, we'll never know.”
He said the only person who could have made that determination was Republican Mark Brnovich, the state attorney general at that time, who Glassman said could have seized the ballots and conducted a “true investigation.”
“Sadly, he did not do that,” Glassman said.
But Brnovich did a review of the results of an “audit” of the 2020 election organized by Petersen and then-Senate President Karen Fann. They gave ballots over to a group with no auditing experience. And what Brnovich concluded was that the audit was “deeply flawed” and that various reports of dead people voting “were ultimately determined to be isolated incidents.”
Glassman chided Petersen for mentioning his role in that audit.
“Be careful what you take credit for,” he said.
“You didn't know about securing the ballots, you didn't know how to run a proper investigation,” Glassman said. “And, in fairness to you, Warren, it's because you weren't even a licensed attorney.”
Petersen, however, never answered Goldstein's question about who won in 2020. Instead, he left open the idea that fraud still might be proven in that 2020 election, explaining how earlier this year he had turned over documents from that audit to Trump's Department of Justice.
The Senate president also said he has been involved in moves to change election laws. He is the author of legislation that would end the ability of Arizonans who had failed to mail back their early ballots to simply drop them off at polling places on Election Day.
“We'll get the results the night of the election instead of having to wait two weeks, three weeks,” Petersen said. “Arizona was 50th in the nation in delivering our electoral votes.”
Glassman said he would protect election integrity, promising to drop pending criminal charges filed by Mayes against “fake electors” and others who she said conspired to try after the 2020 election to deceive Congress that Trump had outpolled Biden and was entitled to the state's 11 electoral votes.
Also gone, he said, would be any criminal charges against Cochise County supervisors who were indicted after initially refusing to certify the results of the 2022 election, charges Glassman said were brought because they “wanted to count their own ballots” versus relying on tabulators.
KJZZ's Wayne Schutsky contributed to this report.
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