Kolodin, the Kraken’s Lawyer, Wants to Run Your Elections. Arizonans Should Say No.

The debate for Arizona Secretary of State on Monday pitted Democrat Adrian Fontes, who has a documented record of running clean elections, against election denier, failed lawyer and proven liar Alex Kolodin, his Republican opponent.

Incumbent Fontes and Republican scammer Kolodin faced off in a televised debate on Arizona PBS.

The State Bar of Arizona sanctioned Kolodin and put him on 18 months of probation for his role in the 2020 “Kraken” lawsuit — the notorious, evidence-free effort to overturn Arizona’s presidential election. A Bar disciplinary panel found he’d pursued cases “backed by no evidence,” that misrepresented Arizona law, and that sought relief that would itself have been illegal.

Kolodin, who has forgotten how to shave, was fined. He was ordered to take ethics classes. He was sanctioned separately by the Arizona Supreme Court for telling the court, in his own filings, that the record “undisputedly” showed tens of thousands of illegal ballots — a claim Chief Justice Robert Brutinel effectively called a lie from the bench.

Fontes didn’t let him forget it on stage:

“There’s only one person at this table who’s been found guilty of lying by the Arizona Supreme Court. It wasn’t me, and that same person had to take ethics classes to learn how to actually do things truthfully.”

The Arsonist Wants to Be Fire Chief

Kolodin spent the debate insisting falsely that “confidence in our elections here in Arizona is at an all-time low” and blaming Fontes. Any alleged drop in confidence by Arizona voters was caused by men like Kolodin, who spent years telling Arizonans, without evidence, that their elections were stolen.

Fontes put it plainly:

“You’re like the arsonist who causes the fire and then says you’re going to come in and cure things.”

Meanwhile, the actual data contradicts Kolodin. As Fontes noted, Noble Predictive — a Republican-leaning pollster, not some Democratic front group — found voter confidence in Arizona’s elections is up 12 percent since 2021.

Kolodin Won’t Answer a Yes-or-No Question

Give moderator Ted Simons credit: he asked Kolodin the simplest possible question—”Are Arizona elections safe and secure?”—not once, but three times. Kolodin never answered it. Not once. He pivoted every time to attacking Fontes personally, relitigating his own court losses as court wins, and raising grievances about proof-of-citizenship litigation.

Simons finally had to say the quiet part out loud: “I assume from the response that you do not think Arizona elections are safe and secure.” That’s what happens when you let an election denier talk long enough—eventually the mask slips, and you realize he never stopped denying.

Fontes, by contrast, answered the question every single time it was asked:

“Arizona’s elections are safe and secure because they’re run by Arizonans. Our county recorders run them. They’re run by our boards of supervisors and elections directors, our friends and our neighbors who are checking IDs at the polling places, verifying signatures in their various counties, moving stuff around in warehouses.”

A “Documented Track Record of Causing Problems”

Kolodin’s losing legal track record includes:

• In Bowyer v. Ducey (the Kraken case), Kolodin wanted mail ballots thrown out and for Arizona’s electors to be directed toward Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa dismissed the case. She found the claims “sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence.”
• In Warden v. Arizona Republican Party, Kolodin argued that unlawful early ballots had been injected into the election system. The Arizona Supreme Court rejected the challenge and imposed a $2,000 sanction on Kolodin.
• In Ward v. Jackson, an Arizona state-court lawsuit challenging ballot-counting equipment, Kolodin represented Kelli Ward, then Chair of Arizona’s Republican Party, following the 2020 election. The judge dismissed the case. Judge Randall Warner dismissed the case on December 4, 2020, finding no evidence of intentional fraud.
• In Arizona Republican Party v. Fontes, Kolodin filed suit for the Arizona Republican Party in 2022, seeking to invalidate Arizona’s mail-in voting system and arguing that voting other than in person on Election Day was unconstitutional. Judge Lee F. Jantzen dismissed the case.

As Fontes put it:

“Mr. Kolodin has a habit of blowing things out of proportion for his own ends, which include grifting on the big lie… he’s happy to tout the very few wins that he may have had over minor policy decisions, but he doesn’t mention any of the major losses and vast waste of taxpayer dollars that he has attributed to the lies and conspiracies of his election denialism.”

And on the current fight over proof-of-citizenship voting rules now before the U.S. Supreme Court, Kolodin called Fontes “a radical” who is “far outside the mainstream.”

What’s Actually at Stake

Arizona’s Secretary of State certifies our elections. The State Bar found that Kolodin had misled a court about elections the office exists to protect. Fontes has run the office through hostile litigation, threats against election workers, and a barrage of bad-faith lawsuits, and Arizona’s elections have kept working. Kolodin wants to be rewarded for the barrage.

Arizonans have a clear choice in this race, and it isn’t close. One candidate has spent a career defending the people who run our elections. The other was sanctioned for lying about them. Arizonans should vote like it matters — because this one does.