PHOENIX – Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego faced off Wednesday night in Arizona’s spirited first and only Senate debate, trading shots over the border, abortion, tax policy and more.
The barbs started before the moderators even asked a single question.
“We are at a crossroads, Arizona,” Gallego said in his opening statement, highlighting Lake’s repeated election denial. “We’re going to see and talk to someone who has really failed the basic test of honesty.”
Lake replied, “Tonight we’re going to watch someone reinvent themselves. Someone who was a member of the Progressive Caucus, someone who destroyed the congressional district he served for the past decade.”
As the candidates switched from topic to topic on stage for an hour, the answers returned to a key segment of voters: old-school Republicans and independents who aren’t necessarily comfortable with Lake. Gallego continually referenced his support from prominent Republicans in Arizona, while Lake repeatedly brought up former President Donald Trump as she tried to prevent Trump voters from crossing over in the Senate race.
“Border mayors who used to campaign with her are now campaigning with me because they think she doesn’t mean this,” Gallego said at one point. He added: “It looks like Donald Trump doesn’t want to campaign with her anymore either. He doesn’t allow her pictures to be on his billboards. This is what we see now: a candidate who could only talk, but is not actually achieving results.”
Lake, who mentioned Trump by name several times during the debate, quickly responded.
“President Trump, my good friend, has called me ‘border Kari,’” Lake said. “I like the nickname, and I’m going to go there to Washington, D.C., and help him build that border wall and secure the border.”
A huge campaign bus parked outside the debate featured a large image of Trump and Lake, along with large inscriptions expressing his support for her. Campaign signs around Phoenix also show photos of Lake and Trump, with the text “Trump endorsed!”
Gallego, on the other hand, did not mention Vice President Kamala Harris by name during the debate. In an interview with NBC News earlier this week, he said he was leading “independently” of Harris. He has not attended most of her campaign events and state visits.
The issues that loomed large during the race were immigration and border security, a central issue for Arizona, which shares its southern border with Mexico. These topics were once again in the spotlight on Wednesday evening, as moderators devoted nearly half of the 60-minute debate to the issue.
“A community without border control is not a country,” Gallego said when asked if he supports open borders. “Absolutely not.”
Lake’s rebuttal focused on Laken Riley, the 22-year-old student allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia, to drive home the importance of the border. “We want to be able to go jogging in the morning like Laken Riley did and not have to worry about being murdered, raped and murdered,” she said.
Lake reiterated her stance this week in an interview with NBC News, saying she did not support any part of the bipartisan border security bill — falsely claiming the legislation “sent $115 billion abroad to kill people.”
“The senators were not bipartisan,” Lake said misleadingly of the trio largely behind the bill. The bipartisan legislation was negotiated by retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — whose open seat Lake is contesting — along with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.
Lake has long made the border a cornerstone of her campaign, chastising Gallego for supporting the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies. Gallego, in turn, authored the bipartisan border bill that Trump and Lake opposed, a major part of his campaign.
“The compromise bill that was supported by Border Patrol and Kari Lake, because she still can’t explain, she can’t explain, why she opposed the bill,” he fired back.
Halfway through, the moderators shifted the discussion to abortion. With early voting underway in the state, Arizonans will vote on Proposition 139, a proposed state constitutional amendment that would enshrine abortion rights through fetal viability.
Gallego brought up Lake’s flip-flop on Arizona’s since-repealed 1864 abortion ban, which would have banned all abortions without exceptions for rape or incest. “She said it was a great law,” he said, pointing to Lake’s comments about the 1864 ban during her 2022 bid for governor. During her Senate bid, Lake came out against it.
“I want to make sure that UVF is protected,” Lake said, most likely referring to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a fertility treatment that has become the latest front in the political fight over reproductive rights.
“He acts like he cares about us,” Lake said of Gallego, “speaking directly to the women” as he watched the debate.
Both candidates have been reminding their potential voters of each other’s past for months. For Lake, it ties Gallego to its progressive past. For Gallego, it highlights Lake’s fervent election denial after the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 governorship race, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs.
When asked to say “once and for all” that she had lost her race, over which she filed unsuccessful lawsuits, Lake instead referred to an earlier question about Arizona’s water crisis and said, “Can I talk about water ?”
After the debate, the Lake campaign sent several surrogates to tell reporters that she had “won” the debate and seemed strong, while Gallego seemed “weak.”
Speaking to the media immediately after the debate, Gallego said: “She has to be loud, she has to lie because she is weak. That’s it. The weaker you are, the louder you are.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
