Why is Kari Lake so afraid of a Republic reporter asking questions at a debate?

Just hours before the only televised debate among the Republican candidates for Arizona governor, a reporter for the state’s largest news operation has been canceled as a moderator.

It seems Kari Lake is afraid to take questions from The Arizona Republic’s Stacey Barchenger.

I guess I don’t blame her.

Barchenger is no Christina Bobb.

She doesn’t work for OAN or RSBN or even Fox (though I suppose Fox, too, has joined Lake’s ever-lengthening list of “enemy of the people” journalists, what with Brett Baier having dared to ask her this week about her experiences with one of the Valley’s best known drag queens).

Kari Lake asked for her to be removed

Every election season, the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission holds candidate debates that are aired on PBS’ Arizona Horizon. Often, The Republic reporters assigned to cover those races – the ones who follow the candidates most closely – co-moderate with Horizon host Ted Simons.

Barchenger covers both the Governor’s Office and the governor’s race, which makes her well suited to pose questions and as importantly, follow-up questions, to the candidates.

She was removed as a moderater on Wednesday, just hours before the 5 p.m. debate, after Lake objected.

Sam Stone, policy director for the Lake campaign, told me Lake wasn’t informed until Tuesday evening that Barchenger would be co-moderating the debate with Simons. She requested Barchenger’s removal, though he said it wasn’t a condition of Lake’s participation in the debate.

“Frankly, in the 10 months she’s been covering this race, Stacey and Kari have developed an adversarial relationship,” he said. “We just didn’t feel it was right for her to moderate a debate.”

Lake only does 2 kinds of interviews

When I asked for an example, Stone pointed to Barchenger’s questioning of Lake’s current border plan and how it squares with her earlier proposal to offer amnesty to immigrants who are here illegally. Stone said Barchenger’s approach was “very pointed and adversarial”.

In other words, Barchenger was doing her job.

Reporters are supposed to haul out the hotseat for candidates who want to govern a growing state of 7.2 million people. At least, that’s what the good ones do.

A spokeswoman for the Clean Elections Commission said the candidates were originally told there would be one moderator and learned only 24 hours ago that a second moderator had been added to the June 29 debate.

This, even though Barchenger had been scheduled to co-moderate the Arizona PBS debate since April, which was apparently news to Clean Elections.

“In the interest of fairness, we decided to adhere to the original agreement,” Gina Roberts, the commission’s voter education director, told me.

Really, it’s not terribly surprising that Lake would ask for Barchenger’s removal.

From my observation, Lake only does two kinds of interviews. The ones with friendly reporters from far-right media outlets that throw softballs and the ones with real reporters who she then transforms into campaign props.

Good schtick, but what about real questions?

Who hasn’t seen one of Lake’s patented campaign videos posted to social media, where she refuses to answer a legitimate question and instead proceeds to lecture the reporter about “fake news”. This is often followed up by storming away from the interview, all dutifully recorded by the campaign’s videographer.

Barchenger starred in one of those videos during her first days of covering the campaign, when she tried to ask Lake a question outside a Scottsdale school board meeting.

Lake’s response was to chastise Barchenger, The Republic and the media in general.

“Watch Kari put the Az Republic in its place,” she taunted, with the attached video of the encounter.

It’s great schtick for Twitter. Her far-right base eats it up.

But for the only televised debate that’ll allow Arizona voters to see the candidates standing side by side?

Better, apparently, that Barchenger be barred from asking any questions.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why is Kari Lake afraid of a reporter asking questions at a debate?