Fontes and Kolodin Get Chippy In Second SecState Debate

The bitter personal rivalry between Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and his challenger, Republican Alex Kolodin, boiled over at the second SecState debate last night. They exchanged attacks that felt personal, burying policy under insults. We’re not unhappy about that.

Underneath it all, the candidates gave voters a pretty coherent substantive choice. Kolodin said that Arizona’s election system needs significant changes, including tougher voter identification, cleaner rolls and much faster results. Fontes claimed that the existing system is fundamentally secure, that Kolodin exaggerates its problems, and that some of his proposed fixes would make voting more difficult. But now, onto the juicy stuff.

Kolodin repeatedly referred to Fontes as a lawyer for the Sinaloa Cartel. Fontes finally snapped back that if Kolodin said it again they were going to have a “personal problem,” called the allegation a “big fat lie,” and later dismissed the attack as “weak sauce.”

Fontes did work for defendants in cartel-connected firearms cases. He represented Manuel Celis-Acosta, the accused ringleader in the federal Fast and Furious gun-trafficking prosecution, and also represented Emilia Palomina-Robles, who was accused in a plot to obtain military weapons for a Mexican drug cartel. But the available record shows Fontes representing individual criminal defendants, not the Sinaloa cartel as an organization.

Fontes responded by going after Kolodin’s legal record, particularly his involvement in litigation challenging the 2020 election. Kolodin was local counsel in the failed Arizona “Kraken” lawsuit. In 2023 the State Bar admonished him and placed him on 18 months’ probation over that and other election cases. And Fontes’ campaign leaned all the way into it: it operated a live fact-checking site, alexlies.com during the debate. Its pseudonymous fact-checkers were “krakenslayer” and “Raspberry Rosé”. These were digs at Kolodin’s 2020 election litigation and a 2020 traffic stop involving a discarded can of Smirnoff Sparkling Raspberry Rosé.

In less exciting news, they also debated Prop. 144, which Kolodin sold as needed election reform but Fontes rejected. They argued about recent findings that Maricopa County had found eight noncitizen voters on its records. Kolodin said even one was too many. Fontes said the small number undercut Republican claims of widespread noncitizen voting.

Moderators asked Kolodin if he would accept November results in his own race. He said he had both won and lost elections, had tried to do both “with grace,” and added that this year “we will win with grace.” He left the debate without talking to reporters afterward.