Gallego and Lake Spar in Debate - Arizona Green Party's Quintana Turned Away
The Green Party candidate was excluded from participation but showed up to debate anyway...
Mainstream U.S. Senate candidates Ruben Gallego (D) and Kari Lake (R) verbally sparred Wednesday evening in a whirlwind 56-minute production covering an assortment of topics, ranging from border security and abortion to water security and the economy. Each of them made clear appeals to voters on why they are the best choice to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate.
Notably absent from this discourse however was Arizona Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana (G), who at the eleventh hour, and among fellow Green Party protesters, showed up at the debate’s production studio to debate Gallego and Lake.
Law enforcement respectfully denied Quintana entry into the venue citing his lack of invitation, which was based on an editorial decision previously communicated to him.
This editorial decision was made by the ‘AZ Clean Elections’ commission, formerly known as the ‘Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission’, in conjunction with the Arizona Media Association (AMA). Both organizations stuck to their decision, barring Quintana from the debate.
The decision involved the application of an organizational rule that requires any potential debate candidate to receive 1% of the total vote during the primary election. Quintana did not receive the necessary votes to meet this organizational threshold.
“The challenge that we continue to face, as we try to chart away to get these debates in front of more people is that to get the type of media attention that an event like this provides we don’t have an unlimited amount of time to do a debate… I’m sure we will continue to learn and evolve through it, but we built it with intention and without any malicious intent to first and foremost through all of the primary debates, welcome anybody and everybody possible that’s on the ballot that wants to come,” says Chris Kline, President and CEO of the Arizona Media Association.
Kline described how having too many candidates within the production of the debate “left very little time for discussion”. Knowing that challenge, Kline says they structured this cycle of debates with a “slightly different strategy”, by focusing on more popular candidates.
“It left us in an impossible position, because how do you create equity and at the same time figure out a way to make sure that folks at home can actually hear from the candidates that are most likely to win without shutting out other voices? And so we made what we thought was the lowest possible barrier of entry which was 1%, and we did it not with intention to block anyone out.
“Our job is not to say you can’t be a part of the conversation. Our job is simply to say we want to make sure that voters have a chance to hear from candidates and the way to do that is to build a debate that can get (a lot of coverage) and we can’t do that if we only have a forum where people can speak for 5 or 10 minutes,” continues Kline. “The only way we can do that is if we build the type of setting and scenario that’s fair and equitable across all debates, but does have a small barrier to entry, otherwise we would not have (the news coverage we have).
“I respect the Green Party perspective. If I were in their shoes of course I want to be a part of the conversation. All I’m asking them to do is respect the position we’re in and respect that we’re not trying to exclude them, we happily want to find other forums to support them, but this wasn’t the forum where we were able to do that.”
Leading up to this debate however, the Arizona Green Party and other affected candidates took to social media, voicing their own disapproval with this decision, mainly because in practice, the ‘1% rule’ mentioned by Kline effectively prevents smaller political parties in Arizona from participation.
For example, there were 1,276,749 registered voters in July’s primary. Quintana would have needed to receive approximately 12,768 votes of this aggregate to satisfy this editorial rule. The Arizona Green Party only has 3,344 registered voters in total, making this rule virtually unattainable.
Notably however, Quintana’s candidacy did show interest, as it secured over 63,000 signatures from Arizonans to even run in the primary election in the first place (which accounts for roughly 1.5% of all registered voters in Arizona).
Outside the studio, Quintana (holding a megaphone) and his supporters chanted from the perimeter of the property, “Clean elections you can’t hide, we charge you with taking sides!”.
Just this month, State Senator Jake Hoffman (R), believing that the commission had breached state law with this rule, launched his own investigation, determining that the commission should comply with state law, citing a lack of oversight and proper procedures of the applied ‘1% rule’.
Quintana has formally filed a complaint regarding this situation with the Office of the Attorney General.
This was Arizona’s only remaining scheduled debate for the U.S. Senate race as early voting in Arizona began today.
Thank you for covering this! 👏🏾