Arizona’s Only Governor Debate Is Tonight: Biggs, Hourihan and Lombardo Take the Stage as Hobbs Declines

PHOENIX — Tonight at 6 p.m., three rivals running to be Arizona’s next governor will meet onstage for the only debate in the top-of-the-ticket race before Election Day. The hourlong event — a partnership between the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, the state’s voter education agency, and the Arizona Media Association — will be streamed on azcentral.com. The Democrat who currently holds the office, Gov. Katie Hobbs, chose not to participate.

The hour on stageBiggs, Hourihan, Lombardo — and the biggest platform of the race for two of them

The debate will put the full non-incumbent field on one stage: Andy Biggs, the Republican nominee; Teri Hourihan, the No Labels Party nominee; and Risa Lombardo, the Green Party nominee. For Hourihan and Lombardo, the hourlong event is arguably their biggest platform of the race — their best chance to reach voters in the one statewide forum that the major candidates were invited to share.

That forum follows a busy Monday in Arizona debate season. Last night’s slate included the first-ever lieutenant governor debate between Kerr and Mohan and the attorney general matchup — both covered in full in the newsroom’s Monday night recap and the double-debate-day preview. Tonight’s hour is the only one reserved for the governor’s office itself.

Who’s on the stageThe frontrunner and the two long shots

Andy Biggs is the race’s heavyweight by name recognition. He has represented the southeast Valley in the U.S. House or at the Arizona Capitol since 2002, winning the 5th Congressional District seat in 2016 and serving five terms. He entered the governor’s race as the Republican nominee and has run an aggressive campaign painting Hobbs as unwilling to defend her record — including the mock debate stunt his campaign staged last week (more on that below).

Teri Hourihan arrived on the November ballot by way of one of the year’s bigger surprises. Born and raised in Glendale, she became a licensed professional counselor in 2017 and founded a health practice a year later. In July, she won the No Labels Party’s gubernatorial nomination in an upset over the vastly better-funded health care executive Hugh Lytle — a result that briefly put the centrist party’s ballot line at the center of the race’s math. FOX10 Phoenix notes that on her March 2026 nomination paperwork, Hourihan listed herself as seeking the Arizona Independent Party nomination for a congressional district; the “Arizona Independent Party” website prominently identifies itself as the No Labels Party of Arizona.

Risa Lombardo is on the ballot despite being, in her own party’s words, unwanted there. The Arizona Green Party’s website lists her candidacy as “actively opposed,” and in an August 31 statement the party asked the secretary of state to remove her from the general election ballot and replace her with a candidate it actually endorsed. The party said it had raised questions publicly as far back as late 2025 about Lombardo and other candidates seeking party nominations who were unknown to the party and had not previously been involved with it. Lombardo’s campaign website does not list political positions; it lists the Green Party’s four pillars and key values. Separately, she faces an investigation by the Clean Elections Commission into whether she actually qualified for public campaign financing.

The empty podiumHobbs’ no-debate stance — and Biggs’ mock-debate answer

Hobbs’ absence is likely to be a focus of the evening itself. Her campaign announced in July that she would not debate Biggs, and campaign manager Nicole DeMont’s explanation has become one of the race’s signature lines. “Face-to-face engagement with Arizonans is more effective than a stage designed for short soundbites and political theater,” DeMont said. The stance continues her break from gubernatorial tradition — and her own track record. In 2022, Hobbs skipped two debates in the race she went on to win, and she also declined to debate her primary opponent that year, Marco Lopez.

Biggs has been trying to make the refusal a winning issue. Last week his campaign sent an alert on Thursday, Oct. 1, billing that night’s event as the “first gubernatorial debate.” Viewers who tuned in on social media found Arizona resident and comedian Rob Schneider, in character as moderator “Roberto Schneidecky,” posing questions to Biggs while the camera periodically cut to an empty lectern with a chyron reading “Katie Hobbs/Afraid To Debate.” The skit took place before an audience of Grand Canyon University students, and gave Biggs an uninterrupted hour to lay out his positions — including his take on the Make America Healthy Again agenda. The strategy was clear: if Hobbs won’t give him a debate stage, he’ll build one around her absence.

What’s nextEarly voting begins tomorrow

The debate airs on the eve of early voting, which begins tomorrow, Oct. 7, in Arizona. The voter registration deadline was yesterday, Oct. 5 — it is now too late to register for the November election. According to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, two Republican write-in candidates for governor, Gertritrude Gonzalez and Alice Novoa, qualified — but neither was invited to tonight’s debate.

The Nov. 3 election looks like the rematch of 2022’s nail-biter, even if one of its principals won’t be onstage tonight. Hobbs took the governor’s office four years ago by about 17,000 votes, or less than one percentage point, and she is asking Arizonans to elect her to a second term — painting Biggs as too far right to lead the swing state. Polling and fundraising both tip in Hobbs’ favor, according to azcentral’s reporting. Tonight, Biggs gets his one uninterrupted statewide hour without her — and Hourihan and Lombardo get the largest audience their campaigns may ever see.