Democrats, their allies in the media, and even some Republicans have tried to frame congressional candidates backed by former President Donald Trump as generally weak and unable to draw crossover appeal from Independents.

And yet, many of them can’t seem to get their Democratic opponents to debate them, according to Just the News.

“Candidates in swing states including Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are shying away from debating opponents who had been dismissed as tainted by association with former president or lacking crossover appeal,” the outlet reports.

In July, Reuters noted: “Republican voters’ embrace of fringe and divisive candidates is jeopardizing the party’s goal of taking control of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm elections, as well as winning key governors’ races.”

That said, Trump candidates are playing havoc trying to pin down their Dem opponents for debate dates.

In fact, in Arizona, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, has decided she won’t debate Trump-backed former newscaster Kari Lake, who has been maligned by national media outlets as an “election denier.”

The decision comes on the heels of a Trafalgar Group poll last week that found Lake ahead 47-46 percent, though that’s within the margin of error and 5 percent are undecided.

Just the News reports:

In a letter to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, Hobbs’ campaign manager Nicole DeMont said her candidate refused to take part in something she said will make Arizona “the butt of late-night TV jokes and national ridicule.” In the GOP primary debate, she wrote, “Kari Lake brought almost every single answer back to lies about an election that happened almost two years ago.”

Well, if Lake is such a joke, then it should be easy to point that out in a debate — right? Apparently, Lake’s not a joke and Hobbs obviously doesn’t believe debating her will help Hobbs’ chances.

But, Just the News adds, there is likely much that Hobbs doesn’t want to discuss stemming from her handling of the 2020 election:

Hobbs, the incumbent secretary of state, was elected with heavy funding from left-wing megadonor George Soros and had authority over the administration of the disputed 2020 presidential election in the state, in which Joe Biden eked out a victory over Donald Trump by three-tenths of one percent, 49.39% to 49.09%. Suspicions about the election process in Democratic Maricopa County prompted the state’s Republican Senate to order an audit.

The auditors flagged more than 50,000 ballots for further investigation for concerns ranging from people voting from addresses from which they had already moved to residents voting twice. At the same time, the audit reaffirmed the mathematical accuracy of the tally of counted ballots. The total number of questionable ballots was nearly five times the 10,400 vote margin that separated the two candidates. Widely panned by Democrats and their media allies, the audit gave Trump’s troops fresh reason to call for more scrutiny.

After refusing earlier offers to debate, Hobbs demanded changes to the debate format; Lake quickly agreed to debate in any format. But it didn’t help.

“I made it unbelievably easy for her,” Lake said after Hobbs’ final refusal. “She picks the date, the time, the moderator. She even had the chance to write all of the questions. But she would rather hide from the voters and let Soros and other dark money groups pour millions of dollars in attack ads against me.”

Meanwhile, Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly hasn’t yet agreed to debate his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, who is backed by Trump and whom the Kelly campaign has dismissed as a “fringe” candidate.

And in Pennsylvania, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has rejected GOP opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz’s invitation to debate as the two battle for retiring Sen. Rob Portman’s (R) seat. Fetterman also refused to debate in the primary, likely because he is a ‘fringe’ candidate who backs the kind of soft-on-crime ‘reforms’ that have been blamed for dramatic increases in violent crime — especially in Philadelphia — as well as ‘green’ energy policies that would harm Pennsylvanian fossil fuel producers.