If you've been following this race, you know why Democrats are popping Lexapro and Xanax like one of the Real Housewives regarding the races in Arizona. They fear Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, is blowing it against Republican firebrand Kari Lake. Top Democrats are not enthused by what they see on the ground. Former Obama aides and operatives who know what it takes to win elections are also not impressed by Hobbs, who is agonizingly bland. Everyone had the same criticism of this campaign: her refusal to debate Lake.
The Arizona gubernatorial election is close, though Lake has the advantage given that it will be a more Republican electorate this year. The GOP is more enthused to vote. The economic recession, the high inflation, and Joe Biden's heinous approval ratings have Democrats hiding under the bed when he's around. You can't just avoid a debate—if anything, it shows that Hobbs, to quote Jed Bartlet, is "a .22 caliber mind in a .357 magnum world."
Hobbs' talking point that she doesn't want to be part of a media circus with a conspiracy theorist is not resonating because Democrats like David Axelrod have called her out for essentially being a coward. Axelrod added that it's also a strategic mistake since it cedes the media field, acknowledging that she is a media force to be reckoned with and Hobbs doesn't have the talent or finesse to hold her own with the feisty former journalist.
Arizona Democrats are in total disarray. Shame on the DC reporters for failing to report the multiple scandals. @katiehobbs is imploding and the @DemocraticAGs abandoned @krismayes.
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) October 12, 2022
Only @OfficialJLD is left.
Even liberal writers in Arizona have called Hobbs' decision to hide in the bunker the latest form of political malpractice. Do voters care about Lake treading toward what the liberal media calls the fringe on some issues? No. Her 20-plus-year career as a television journalist has mostly neutralized Hobbs' attempts to cast her as a looney tune. Lake has been in the homes of Arizonans for years—there's a familiarity with her. The same cannot be said for Hobbs, whose anti-debate intransigence reeks more of spineless elitism (via NYT):
It’s angst season on the left — and perhaps nowhere more so than in Arizona, which appears determined to retain its crown as the most politically volatile state in America.
Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races of the 2022 campaign.
Lake, a telegenic former television anchor who rose to prominence as she pantomimed Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, has taken a hard line against abortion and routinely uses strident language on the stump. The Atlantic recently called her “Trumpism’s leading lady.” She has largely overshadowed Hobbs, whose more subdued personality has driven far fewer headlines.
The immediate object of Democratic hand-wringing this week is a decision by Hobbs, who has served as Arizona’s secretary of state since 2019, to decline to debate Lake. Instead, Hobbs arranged a one-on-one interview with a local PBS affiliate, a move that prompted the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, a group established by a ballot initiative in 1998, to cancel its planned Q. and A. with Lake.
[…]
Laurie Roberts, a liberal columnist for The Arizona Republic, published a scathing column on Hobbs this week in which she wrote that the Democratic nominee’s refusal to debate Lake “represents a new level of political malpractice.”
And David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, criticized Hobbs on his podcast for what he said was a “mistake” in avoiding debates with Lake. He added, “I think it’s a recognition that Kari Lake is a formidable media personality.”
Democrats have also noted that when Hobbs appeared on “Face the Nation” — directly after Lake gave an interview to Major Garrett of CBS News — she spent much of the eight-minute interview on the defensive rather than prosecuting a political argument against her opponent.
"I can't debate with Lake because I want this to be substantive debate" could come off as "you're too stupid to know what I'm saying, so why even bother speaking with you?" The New York Times piece does say that Democrats admit privately that the secretary of state is running a campaign about as best as any Democrat can in the state, which is honestly saying something since it's still hot garbage.
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