The country watched last week as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debated in a high stakes moment in an already roller coaster of an election.
There are also a host of other local debates happening in Arizona right now that are meant to give voters a sense of the candidates, the issues and where they stand. But not all of the candidates participate in these debates. Who does and who doesn’t can say a lot about a race.
KJZZ Politics Desk reporter Wayne Schutsky joined The Show to talk more about local debates and where they stand today.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: So these debates are supposed to be kind of a public service, right? They're run by the Clean Elections Commission. You are hosting a bunch of them, I know, this year. And some candidates are actually required to participate, right?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. So Clean Elections candidates, these are ones receiving public funding via the clean Elections Commission. A part of that deal is that they have to show up to these debates and either participate in a Q&A if no one else shows up or debate against their opponents.
GILGER: But for everyone else, it's optional. And if you kind of look at the Clean Elections website, where they list all of these debates, it sure does look like there are a lot of candidate candidates with kind of an X next to their name, or they just didn't respond. Is it more than it used to be who sort of are opting out of these debates?
SCHUTSKY: Well, I think speaking just since in the past few election cycles, since I've been participating, it's kind of always been like this at the legislative level and the congressional level, at least. I think there's a host of reasons why. But yeah, a lot of these candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, are choosing just to kind of skip these altogether.
GILGER: And it seems to be across the aisle, right? Like this is not just Republicans, not just Democrats who are saying no thanks to debating. Talk a little bit about the politics here, Wayne. What are the calculations that go into why a candidate would not or would want to debate?
SCHUTSKY: Yeah, so to drive this home a little bit, I looked at all those that list of all the debates that you looked about. And of the legislative debates that have happened so far of the 16, 13 had someone at least one candidate not participating. And that includes Democrats and Republicans like you mentioned.
And I think a lot of the calculus here is that most of our legislative districts are not competitive. So they either lean so heavily towards one party or the other that we know who's going to win based on the letter next to their name. And so what you see is a lot of these safe incumbents, these already existing lawmakers — Democrats in heavily Democratic districts, Republicans in heavily Republican districts — aren't participating because they just, I don't think, see a benefit to it. I'm debating an opponent I'm going to defeat anyway. Why even show up?
GILGER: That's so interesting because on it, it makes sense politically but on its surface, like does it serve the public?
SCHUTSKY: Well, I mean, from a, from a viewpoint that voters should be able to hear from the people that want to represent them, I would say no. I mean, even if you're gonna handily defeat this person, show up, spend half an hour an hour, however long, describing your viewpoints and why you should be the person rather than just kind of accepting that you've been appointed based on your party registration.
GILGER: Interesting. What about when a race is kind of too competitive, Wayne? Like when there's too much to lose for a candidate? I'm thinking of 2022 when we saw now-Gov. Katie Hobbs say, you know, I'm not going to debate Kari Lake. Did that pay off for her?
SCHUTSKY: It paid off for her. But I do think there's a real risk there, because there's a situation where you need to define yourself and you're in a competitive district. So you're not guaranteed a win in this situation.
Katie Hobbs made the decision that debating against Kari Lake, who was a very seasoned person in front of a camera based on her career as a broadcaster. And Katie Hobbs is a little bit more of a reserve speaker. And there was the whole issue of election denialism and spreading false rumors.
And Katie Hobbs’ team made the decision and it worked out for them that, you know, if we do this, we're probably, we can only hurt ourselves here. But I think there's a real risk when you're running in a competitive district not debating.
And I'm looking at the Maricopa County recorder race, where we have two candidates who no one really knows. We have Tim Stringham, the Democrat, and Justin Heap, a first-term Republican lawmaker on the Republican side. Heap skipped both debates, A PBS debate and a Clean Elections debate. And he risks letting Stringham introduce himself to voters and voters not really knowing much about who he is, letting Stringham define him.
GILGER: That's really interesting. So, have you hosted debates this time around Wayne where it was just one side essentially?
SCHUTSKY: Yes. Most of the debates I have hosted, unfortunately. I host legislative debates online, so various legislative districts around the state. And yeah, I hosted one for Legislative District 22 on the west side, which is a heavily Democratic district, and all of the incumbents and Democrats running, including Minority Leader Lupe Contreras, who leads the Democrats in the House of Representatives, just didn't show up. So I was left talking to three Republican candidates who really have virtually no shot at winning.
And I was happy to do it, happy to give them the venue to say why, hey, Democrats, Independents and Republicans should vote for them. But ultimately, I think it's a disservice to voters that they weren't able to hear from the people who are probably going to win that election.
GILGER: That's really interesting. This continues to be an interesting case for Kari Lake this time around, right? Because this election cycle when she's running for Senate now, she didn't want to debate Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the primary, right? When she was ahead and pretty sure she was going to win that primary.
Now she's in a tougher race against Congressman Ruben Gallego on the Democratic side, and she really wants to debate, it sounds like. And there's also an added layer here where she's trying to get the Green Party candidate included in that debate as well.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah, it all goes back to politics. It's interesting, Lake really eviscerated Hobbs for not debating her back in 2022, and now she chose not to debate her primary opponent. But it goes back to that safe district argument, right?
Lake was always the favorite in that race, and I think she thought there's nothing I can do but hurt myself by giving Mark Lamb an opportunity to say why he thinks he's the better choice than me in a large venue.
But now we're in a competitive race. And so Lake, rather, it's difficult to appeal to the Independents and moderates who are probably going to decide that race if you're just kind of in your silos, showing up to rallies where you're rallying your base and saying all the things that Lake has been kind of criticized for alienating those moderates she needs.
In a debate, she can kind of go head to head with Gallego, try and define him as being too far left and show why she's the right choice for those moderates. And Gallego has the same opportunity. She wants that Green Party candidate in there because I think there's a calculated decision that they believe you'd pull more from the Democratic candidate versus the Republican.
GILGER: Yeah. So there's a question about the format of debates, the kind of viewership of debates these days. I wonder, at a local level, do you think they matter to voters or at least in the coverage that might come out of them could matter to voters?
SCHUTSKY: It's a really difficult question to answer. I know that most of my debates legislatively that I'm doing, you know, they're streamed online. I can see how many viewers we have during the debate. In a lot of cases, it's not that many, but then they're archived on YouTube.
And so I can definitely see a situation where once people get their ballots and they're like, "Oh, who's this person? Who should I vote for in this race that I haven't been paying attention to?" Because unfortunately down-ballot races, legislative races just have a lot less attention on them. You know, Googling the person's name, the debate comes up and now they have a venue to see that. So I still think it's a valuable resource.
It's just a question of how, how we bump up that, that viewership, how we let people know these things are happening, all that kind of thing to get voters more engaged with this process. Because I think if voter engagement, voter viewership went up, then you'd probably start seeing more people participate.
