Arizona Republican candidates clash in 2nd Congressional District debate

Republican congressional candidates who want a shot to unseat one of the nation's most endangered House Democrats clashed Wednesday in a face-to-face debate in Arizona’s race for the 2nd Congressional District that spans the northeastern part of the state.

The trio sparred over Arizona officials’ handling of the 2020 election results, illegal immigration and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot a the U.S. Capitol.

The winner of the Aug. 2 GOP primary election will face incumbent Rep. Tom O’Halleran, a three-term centrist Democrat whose district in the past has been one of the state’s most competitive.

Arizona’s new congressional maps have redrawn him into a district that still includes northeastern Arizona, but now includes the Prescott area and is considered more GOP friendly.

Three of the seven Republicans who want to oust O'Halleran — state Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake; Ron Watkins, a computer scientist who has been believed to be a central player in the QAnon conspiracy theory; and Andy Yates, a small business owner from Prescott — cast themselves as best qualified to represent the rural area.

The other candidates, architect Mark DeLuzio, farmer and small business owner Steven Krystofiak, Williams mayor John Moore, and former Navy SEAL Eli Crane, did not participate. Three declined to debate and one did not respond to the invitation, host Ted Simons said.

Arizona PBS (Channel 8) hosted and televised the debate.

Almost immediately, Blackman and Watkins locked in a fiery exchange about the state Legislature’s handling of the 2020 election in which former President Donald Trump narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Both said the 2020 election was stolen from Trump even though there is no evidence to back up their baseless claims of fraud.

“When the election was stolen, I was out there fighting tooth-and-nail to bring the information to the politicians,” Watkins said. “ … I was the guy who discovered that the machines were stealing the votes. I posted it on Twitter and President Trump was retweeting me. … The politicians didn’t do anything with it. They certified the election.”

Blackman agreed the election was “stolen.” But he said there was no way to “decertify” the election results, as Trump and many of his supporters have demanded.

“We’ve been in session for 100 days and you guys haven’t come up with a decertification” mechanism, he told Watkins. He noted his support after the election for a “forensic audit.”

Yates, however, bluntly said Biden won the election.

“Was this election stolen,” Simons asked him.

“No, I don’t believe it was,” Yates responded. He said the state’s election systems and procedures could be improved. But, he said, voters “are ready to move on” from debating the 2020 election.

Yates and Blackman said they trust the election system as it stands now in Arizona. Watkins said he does not. If he were to win, Watkins said he would mount a congressional investigation into the matter. Blackman accused him of misunderstanding the role of Congress: "You do not have the authority to interfere in state elections."

Simons asked the candidates how they would have responded as Congress members during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol. Watkins said he would have texted Trump and asked him to call off the attack; he inaccurately said “just a few people” stormed the Capitol.

Yates said he looks forward to the House select committee’s findings on the riot and said those who broke the law should be prosecuted. Jan. 6, he said, “was a sad day for America. I think it’s really depressing.”

Blackman called some who stormed the Capitol “domestic enemies. … Those folks who committed those crimes should be held to the fullest extent of the law.”

Aside from rehashing the previous election, all of the candidates pledged to support reforms that would mix border security and immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border. They all said they supported allowing young people known as “dreamers” who migrated to the U.S. without authorization to remain in the country.

On abortion rights, Blackman reiterated his position that women who opt to end their pregnancies and the doctors who perform them should be prosecuted.

“If I have to do something to save the Black community of babies being aborted in a record number, guess what? I’m going to do it," he said. "But we need to save all babies.”

Watkins said all instances of abortions “need to go before a judge and a jury as a homicide.”

For his part, Yates said he was closely watching the U.S. Supreme Court’s potential reconsideration of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established abortion rights.

“An issue of this magnitude and importance should be decided by democratically elected representatives,” he said. “But no, I’m not going to put handcuffs on doctors and women coming out of surgery. We’ve got a big win coming right now with the Supreme Court. I think we should be happy with that.”

Watkins again denied he was the author of the "Q" posts on bulletin boards operated in part by him that sparked the global QAnon conspiracy theory. He said he is not responsible for spreading misinformation that may have led to the Jan. 6 violence.

“There are many thousand, thousands of people, that posted on those sites,” he said. “Q was just one of those and I do not know who that was and I am not that person."

O’Halleran, D-Ariz., won his seat in the 2016 election, and won additional terms in 2018 and 2020. He is unopposed in this year's Democratic primary election.

Before joining Congress, O'Halleran served in the Arizona Senate from 2006 to 2009 and in the Arizona House of Representatives between 2001 and 2006 as a Republican. He left the GOP in 2014.

Have news to share about Arizona politics? Reach the reporter on Twitter and Facebook. Contact her at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com and 602-444-4712.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Republican primary hopefuls clash at 2nd Congressional District debate