Alex Kolodin, the Republican running to be the state’s top election administrator as secretary of state, refused to say that Arizona’s elections are safe and secure in a candidate forum Monday on public television.
He dodged the question multiple times, instead declaring that Arizonans don’t have confidence in the state’s elections and blaming Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state, for turning Arizona elections from “a national model to a national embarrassment.”
Throughout the 27-minute forum that was broadcast on Arizona PBS, Kolodin evaded questions or gave meandering answers that only tangentially related to the question, as “Arizona Horizon” host Ted Simons repeatedly tried — mostly in vain — to get him to give straight answers.
“He’s not answering your questions because his actual answers would turn off a lot of Arizona voters,” Fontes told Simons at one point.
Fontes openly needled Kolodin about his evasiveness, repeatedly interrupting the GOP state legislator to point out how he was failing to provide simple answers to questions.
“Stop talking about me. What do you want?” Fontes said when Kolodin began answering a question about whether he would support President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict voting by mail by accusing Fontes of “making a big deal of things” that don’t concern Arizona.
“Why don’t you just answer the question, Alex?” Fontes interjected at another point.
“You could have just said ‘no,’ but you didn’t,” Fontes told Kolodin after he rejected the label “election denier” in an answer that focused more on a dispute over election observers in Pinal County than it did in hewing to the question he was asked.
Fontes accused Kolodin of trying to hide his true views through misleading answers and prevarications, and said his refusal to be honest and straightforward does a disservice to voters.
“What I’d like to do is invite Alex Kolodin to just give straight answers to questions. This isn’t, like, a show. This is serious. Arizona voters need to see who you really are, not the prepared, canned answers,” he said near the end of the forum. “They need to see who you are, not who you prepared to be. Come on.”
Kolodin, a state representative from Scottsdale who is a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, has backed changes to Arizona election laws that are inspired by conspiracy theories, including banning no-excuse vote-by-mail and returning to voting in tiny precincts, which election officials said was logistically impossible. He handily won the GOP nomination for secretary of state in the July 21 primary election.
Although he said it was “absurd” and “ridiculous” to label him an “election denier,” Kolodin’s record as an attorney and a state legislator are replete with unfounded claims about Arizona’s elections.
He was one of the key attorneys for Trump’s campaign who challenged the 2020 election results in the state and has represented a number of prominent election deniers.
Following Trump’s 2020 loss in Arizona, Kolodin was among the attorneys who signed on to the so-called “kraken” lawsuit that was based on claims made by people with no actual knowledge of the elections. While Kolodin and the other attorneys submitted more than 300 pages of attachments, the purported evidence was mostly “anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and relevant analysis of unrelated elections,” and a federal judge nixed the case in a scathing dismissal, saying that it would “utterly disenfranchise” millions of Arizonans who voted in the 2020 election based on claims that were “sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence.”
An Arizona Supreme Court disciplinary panel later found that Kolodin “violated his duty to the legal profession, the legal system, and the public” by bringing that lawsuit because it was backed by no evidence, misrepresented Arizona law and sought relief that would be illegal.
During the “Arizona Horizon” forum, Kolodin appeared at times to struggle with separating himself from Trump and the election lies that have been a defining characteristic of his time as president.
For instance, Trump has attacked Arizona’s elections that he or his allies lost — like his in 2020 or Kari Lake losing the governor’s race in 2022 — as being riddled with fraud. On the question about whether the state’s elections are “safe and secure,” Kolodin answered not by saying what he thought, but by pointing instead to falling voter confidence in the state’s elections, which he said is “at an all-time low” because of Fontes’ mismanagement.
Fontes shot back that Kolodin was lying — a poll in late 2025 found voter confidence had significantly rebounded — and accused him of establishing his political career by “grifting on the Big Lie” and trying to parlay that into being the man overseeing all Arizona elections.
“You were one of the folks who was the architect of the Big Lie here in Arizona. You’re the one who has caused the misinformation and distrust,” he said. “You’re like the arsonist who causes the fire and then says you’re going to come in and cure things.”
Kolodin retorted that Fontes was “a radical” with views “far outside the mainstream” and said his record at the legislature was one of working across party lines.
“I have a documented record of solving problems,” he said. “Mr. Fontes has a documented record of causing them.”
Later, Kolodin took pains to avoid criticizing Trump for his aggressive efforts to make sweeping changes to elections, particularly by cracking down on voting by mail, which the president — who regularly votes by mail — has baselessly said is a source of widespread fraud that aids Democrats.
When asked if voting by mail is a source of fraud, Kolodin equivocated, saying that it can be done safely “when we have a secretary of state that will follow the law.”
Fontes fired back that Kolodin was little more than a lackey for Trump who would do anything the president or his administration asks, whether it has to do with mail ballots or turning over the state’s voter rolls. Fontes fought that request from the Trump administration and won in federal court — as has every state that refused to comply with the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand for voter information.
“The clear answer is obvious: He would have done exactly what the Trump administration would have told him to do, because he’s one of those guys that buys into election denialism,” Fontes said. “He would have thought he was serving his political masters in Washington, D.C., by doing that.”
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: [email protected].
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