Kari Lake lost in 2022 when she ran for Arizona governor, falling short by some 17,000 votes. Like her ally Donald Trump, she has spent almost every day since claiming that she won.

But on Wednesday night, Lake, who has significantly fallen behind her Democratic opponent in the polls, didn’t want to talk about the past.

“Can you finally tell the people of Arizona: Did you win or lose that election?” Rep. Ruben Gallego, Lake’s Democratic rival for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat, asked during the pair’s first and only debate.

Related

Gallego posed the question during a discussion about climate change, something — the consensus that the Earth is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions — that Lake has dismissed as fake science (“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she previously said about the topic. “I’m not going to be afraid of the weather.”). But, trailing by double digits in several recent polls, Lake opted to return to the climate query rather than address the question that her opponent put to her.

“Can I talk about water really quickly?” she asked. “Because I thought we........

© Salon