Arizona Debate Night Recap: Stanton and Jasser Spar Over Tariffs and Socialism as Kerr and Mohan Meet in the First-Ever LG Debate

PHOENIX — Arizona’s debate doubleheader is in the books, and both hours gave voters a real contrast. At 4 p.m., incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton and Republican challenger Zuhdi Jasser turned the 4th Congressional District debate into a fight over tariffs, inflation and who actually caused the economy’s problems — with No Labels nominee Tisha Benoit announcing, in effect, that she’s done with both parties. Then at 6 p.m., Sine Kerr and Angela Harrolle Mohan walked into a piece of Arizona history: the first lieutenant governor debate ever held in the state.

01Tariffs vs. “printing cash”: the economy fight

The 4 p.m. debate, hosted by Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections Commission, wasted no time finding its fault line. Stanton, the Democrat seeking his fifth term, slammed tariffs and pointed a finger at Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill who he said have been reluctant to use their House and Senate majorities to hold back the president’s agenda. “The last thing we need is another Trump sycophant in Congress,” Stanton said, in the debate’s sharpest line, according to the Arizona Republic.

Jasser, a Muslim doctor who has criticized the Affordable Care Act, blamed economic stress on pandemic-era government spending that began under Trump and continued under former President Joe Biden — the Biden administration “printing cash,” as he put it. “As much as Congressman Stanton and his party bosses tell him to use the robotic talking points blaming the administration, and blaming everybody else, they are the cause of the problem,” Jasser said. “Any Econ 101 (student) knows that if you print trillions of dollars, a few years later, you’re going to have growing inflation,” Jasser said.

The exchange set the tone: Stanton running as the check on Washington Republicans, Jasser running as the check on Washington Democrats — and both claiming the other side broke the economy.

02The socialism attack — and the walk-back

The debate’s most revealing moment came when Jasser accused Stanton of being soft on socialism, saying from the stage that Stanton “couldn’t get himself to vote against socialism,” according to the Arizona Republic’s debate recap. The problem with the attack: Stanton was one of Arizona’s seven members of Congress who voted in favor of a 2025 measure denouncing “the horrors of socialism.”

After the debate, Jasser clarified what he meant — he was referring to a Sept. 1 vote on a package that most Democrats opposed because, unlike the 2025 resolution, it included a call to pass the SAVE Act, the controversial voting legislation backed by Trump. He also downplayed Stanton’s work with the centrist New Democrat bloc, calling the incumbent “a propagandist who pretends to be all about moderation” and, Jasser added, “a person who doesn’t want to suppress the socialists in his party,” according to the Republic.

Stanton’s response was to lean into the moderation charge as a badge of honor. “That’s a strange argument,” he told reporters afterward. “The number one argument of my (primary) opponent was that I’m too moderate.” He listed business organizations backing his campaign, including the national, statewide and local Chambers of Commerce. “If I write a book, very few people will read it,” he said. “But it’s how you govern effectively.”

Context for the race: Stanton, the former Phoenix mayor, has been reelected every two years since 2018 and won by roughly 7 points in 2024. The district covers parts of Phoenix — including all of Ahwatukee — plus Chandler, Tempe and parts of Mesa. There is also a write-in candidate, Steven Sanders of Tempe, listed with the No Labels Party by the Secretary of State’s office.

03Health care: three different playbooks

On health care, the three candidates offered three distinct visions. Jasser called for price transparency in health care and spoke against institutional investors buying up homes and businesses — naming private equity, the Chinese government, the Qatari government and hedge funds as forces to rein in, per the Republic’s recap.

Stanton highlighted his vote for the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, aimed at keeping big investors out of the housing market, and called for an end to federal tax breaks for data centers. He also said the country should keep AI out of health-insurance decisions. Benoit, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, said the country needs to focus more on preventive care and praised a measure that would expand Medicare to cover acupuncture for seniors.

04Benoit’s break from the GOP

The most personally revealing arc of the afternoon belonged to Benoit, the No Labels Party of Arizona nominee. She voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 — and told reporters after the debate she’s soured on the GOP. “It doesn’t appear to have happened, as far as gas prices and things like that,” she said of Trump’s promises. “Like so many other Americans, who believed that a new administration would solve all the problems, I voted for Trump.” What changed: “All of the stuff that’s happening with Turning Point USA and President Trump … it just led me to realize that I’m a moderate.”

She’s pitching herself as the independent-minded option: “I don’t have to answer to any particular party,” she said from the debate stage. One wrinkle, reported by FOX 10 Phoenix: the No Labels Party of Arizona did not endorse Benoit or any other candidate in this race.

05History at 6 p.m.: the first LG debate ever

Two hours later, the stage reset for something Arizona has never seen. Voters created the lieutenant governor’s office with Proposition 131 in 2022, and this November is the first election in which governor and lieutenant governor run together as a joint ticket — so Monday’s hour between Sine Kerr and Angela Harrolle Mohan was the first lieutenant governor debate in state history. The commission put the debates on in partnership with the Arizona Media Association.

Not everyone showed up. Gov. Katie Hobbs’s pick for No. 2 — former Mesa Mayor John Giles, an Independent — confirmed he would not debate, and Hobbs herself, who did not debate during her 2022 campaign, has also declined the Oct. 6 gubernatorial debate against Biggs. A fourth candidate, Green Party nominee Risa Lombardo’s running mate Lisa Castillo, did not respond to the debate invitation, according to the commission. Kerr didn’t let the empty chairs go unnoticed: “It’s an absolute disgrace that Gov. Hobbs and John Giles will not participate in this debate, and disrespect the voters. They deserve to hear what your future plans are for our state.”

Mohan, for her part, leaned into the newness of the whole arrangement: “It’s almost like a marriage on some level, and we just met,” she said of the unprecedented joint ticket. She’s a registered Independent — previously registered with both major parties — and the running mate of No Labels gubernatorial nominee Teri Hourihan. Kerr, the former state senator from Buckeye and dairy farmer, is running with Republican gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs.

06Kerr’s pitch: cut the income tax, speed up results

Kerr used the hour to hammer the Hobbs administration and lay out the GOP ticket’s goals, previously outlined at a September campaign event: remove the state’s income tax, speed up election results, and support the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts school voucher program — with more front-end scrutiny of purchases made through it. She said the ticket was “not going to govern by veto,” a nod to the more than 500 bills Hobbs has killed in four years working opposite a GOP-majority Legislature.

Asked what a lieutenant governor could address that’s falling through the cracks, Kerr said the state needs to “restore the collaboration and the communication with the Legislature,” adding from firsthand experience working with the Hobbs administration that “any type of communication and strong leadership was totally absent.” She said the campaign has discussed cabinet roles she could take — her experience best suits her to lead the Arizona Department of Agriculture.

07Mohan’s platform: no new taxes, a data-center pause, and a nod to Nevada

Mohan got her largest public platform yet and used it to lay out the No Labels ticket’s ideas at a high level, per the Republic’s recap. No new taxes; a hard look at waste and fraud in government programs; and a temporary moratorium on applications from new large-scale data centers. On schools: support school choice and put more money into public-school classrooms, which she said would incentivize families to bring their children back to public schools. On mail-in voting: the current system is not “completely broken,” but it needs improvements — she suggested biometric identifiers and other investments could help “secure that process.”

On water, Mohan said a No Labels administration would address availability with greater urgency — and commended Nevada for a sewage water recycling program she said Arizona should consider. She also said she could serve as Hourihan’s chief of staff, subject to a full audit of state government to decide the best role, and floated publishing the administration’s weekly goals on a public website so voters can follow along.

Our morning preview of debate day has the full backstory on both tickets and the office itself — including how the job rewrites Arizona’s line of succession for the first time since statehood.

08What happens next

Debate week isn’t over. The gubernatorial debate is Tuesday at 6 p.m., with Biggs, Hourihan and Lombardo on the schedule — Hobbs declined — and a 1st Congressional District debate between Thomas “Jay” Feely IV and Amish Shah is set for Wednesday at 6 p.m., per the commission’s published schedule.

Then the voting starts for real: early voting begins Wednesday, October 7, and Election Day is November 3. Arizona keeps making statewide news this fall — from the attorney general’s lawsuit against pharmacy benefit managers over the opioid crisis to Taiwan’s foreign minister landing in Phoenix as the TSMC bet reshapes the state — and tonight’s Vegas daily roundup has the rest of the Southwest day in review. But Monday belonged to the debate stage — twice.