Journalists’ Roundtable: 8-5-22: Primary Elections

On this Friday’s Journalists’ Roundtable, we discuss the recent primary elections and what’s next. Joining Horizon is Mary Jo Pitzl of the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, Stacey Barchenger of the Arizona Republic, and Jim Small of the Arizona Mirror.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Primary elections

It sounded like the night was pretty big for the pro-Trump slate.

Pitzl: “I think it was a clean sweep there, all the way from Governor to U.S. Senate.”

Barchenger: “The more candidates you had in a race, it seemed like the bigger the Trump candidates lead.”

Does Trump carry more weight than Mike Pence?

Barchenger: “I mean I think so. You also have an element of Ducey only endorsed in two of these races. He wasn’t playing really in all of them. But Trump has an energy with voters that Doug Ducey and Mike Pence do not.”

On Kari Lake:

Barchenger: “She was an early voter. She voted in-person at the polls on Tuesday for the first time, and she has been telling people that the safest way to vote is in-person on election day. If she is elected governor, that is a change that she would like to make. I do think, and I just want to point out, you know, Trump certainly helped in her race, but Arizona, and particularly Phoenix, knows Kari Lake. She was on T.V. for 22 years, and you can’t talk about her win without talking about her history here. She is very well known with voters.”

Pitzl: “She was encouraging people to vote in early ballot… To a certain degree this was a trial run and maybe a bit of a referendum on mail in voting. As you might remember it is still being contested before the Supreme Court by the state Republican Party with support from, notably, Kari Lake.”