Ducey touts conservative record after Trump calls him 'RINO'

PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey defended himself Wednesday after former President Donald Trump called him a “Republican in name only.”

“I’ll hold up my conservative record in Arizona against any other state,” Ducey said when asked about the comments, which Trump made Tuesday when endorsing Republican Kari Lake for governor.

But Ducey, who cannot run again for governor because of term limits, was less willing to get into a squabble with Lake, who has aligned herself squarely with Trump and touted his endorsement. Lake separately detailed for Capitol Media Services some of the things she contends Ducey has done wrong, paralleling the complaints Trump has made about him.

In endorsing Lake, a former news anchor for the Phoenix Fox TV affiliate, Trump said she “will do a far better job than RINO Gov. Doug Ducey.”

“Won’t even be a contest,” the former president continued.

Lake wasted no time in sending out Trump’s message, calling it “the most powerful endorsement in the history of politics.”

But Lake, running in what is seen as a five-way race for the GOP gubernatorial nod, was not willing to follow the former president down the road of bashing Ducey’s credentials.

“Is Doug Ducey a RINO? You’d have to ask him that,” she said in response to a question.

Lake said she was glad Arizona had a Republican governor during the COVID-19 outbreak, at least in comparison with “blue states with Democrat governors.”

“That being said, I disagreed with the way Doug Ducey handled COVID,” she continued. “I don’t believe Gov. Ducey should have shut down the state — twice,” Lake said, referring to the governor’s stay-at-home orders, closing of schools and shuttering of certain businesses he termed “non-essential,” which he ended late last year.

She argued Ducey showed a weakness.

“He could not withstand the pressure from the liberal mayors of Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff and the pressure from activists disguised as journalists in the media who were pushing him to shut the state down, mask people up and destroy our economy,” Lake said. “As governor I will never shut down anyone’s business, school or church.”

She also blasted what she called the “shady, shoddy and corrupt 2020 election.”

“With all of the issues that were being reported back in November, (Secretary of State) Katie Hobbs and Doug Ducey should have never certified the election,” she said. “They both failed the voters of Arizona when they did that.”

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Ducey on Wednesday dismissed that.

“I’m loyal to the people of Arizona,” he said. “And I’m loyal to the Constitution and the law.”

He also seemed less than impressed by Lake getting Trump’s political blessing.

“There’s endorsements all of the time,” he said. “And it’s going to be a very spirited primary.”

He sidestepped questions about what a Lake nomination would mean for the Republican Party.

“Listen, like I said, it’s going to be a long primary process,” Ducey said.

Relations between the governor and the former president began to sour at the end of November when Trump called Ducey on his cell phone. Ducey was in the process of certifying on live TV the official election results, which showed that Joe Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes. The governor, knowing the call was from Trump — the ringtone was “Hail to the Chief” — did not answer.

“I was at a public ceremony, doing an official act, so regardless of who was calling, I was not going to answer the phone at that moment,” he explained later.

Ducey said he did return the call later and spoke to then-President Trump but said Trump did not ask him to overturn the election returns. But Trump, just hours later, reposted a tweet from a pro-Trump TV network, declaring that Ducey “has betrayed the people of Arizona.” Trump added, “TRUE!”

Trump repeated the RINO charge as recently as June, trolling the governor after Ducey made it clear he has no interest in running for the U.S. Senate.

“It would not matter, however, because he could not get the nomination after failing to perform on the Voter Fraud in Arizona,” the former president tweeted. “Also, there is no way he would get my endorsement, which means his aspirations would be permanently put to rest anyway.”

A recent statewide survey indicated Lake was leading the other key GOP contenders for governor, including former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, state Treasurer Kimberly Yee, and business executives Steve Gaynor and Karrin Taylor Robson.

Whoever gets the GOP nod will face off in November 2022 against the Democratic nominee. The main Democratic candidates are Hobbs, the secretary of state, along with former state Rep. Aaron Lieberman and former mayor of Nogales Marco Lopez.