New emails show that Arizona State University (ASU) President Michael Crow pressured Arizona PBS to offer gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs an interview after Hobbs refused to debate Republican Kari Lake — even though it went against the rules of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, which hosts political debates.
One of Crow’s aides, former publisher of The Arizona Republic Mi-Ai Parrish, told the debate sponsor that it was wrong to give an “election denier” a platform for the debate. Crow has a long history of pushing a progressive agenda at ASU. The scandal has become known as DebateGate.
In reaction to the news, Lake said Crow and ASU “infringed” on her First Amendment rights while also committing “blatant election interference.”
“The 2022 election in Arizona was compromised in so many ways. This is just another piece of the puzzle,” Lake said.
The Republic requested emails between Crow and PBS, which revealed that their discussions “appeared to favor one candidate over another” — Hobbs over Lake. They did not want Lake to participate in a debate. PBS’ change in policy violated the Clean Elections rules for political debates, which state that candidates receive one-on-one interviews if their opponents do not agree to debate. ASU failed to turn over the requested emails to The Republic for 690 days — barely before the next election in 2024, when Lake was a Senate candidate.
The Republic found that journalists at PBS and Clean Elections were excluded from the discussion. The news site reported that experts said the maneuvering “called into question Arizona PBS’ independence as a news organization and its autonomy from university influence.”
Hobbs wanted a separate interview instead of the debate format offered by Clean Elections. Clean Elections rejected the alternate format and, per its procedures, stated that it would be providing Lake a separate interview since Hobbs rejected the debate. PBS then announced it would be giving Hobbs a separate interview, sparking a response from Lake stating that she would have nothing to do with PBS and would conduct her Clean Elections interview on another outlet. For two decades, Clean Elections has partnered with PBS to hold candidate debates.
PBS went ahead with the interview of Hobbs, and Lake did her Clean Elections interview on Channel 7 instead, which has a smaller viewership.
