Watch Live: Sean Reyes, Greg Skordas take the stage for attorney general debate

Utah’s candidates for attorney general take the debate stage Wednesday night at 6 p.m.

Incumbent Attorney General Sean Reyes — who is seeking reelection to a post he’s held since 2013, when he was appointed by Republican Gov. Gary Herbert after a corruption scandal — will face off against Democratic nominee Greg Skordas, a defense attorney.

Likely to come up as an issue Wednesday night is the question of why the debate between Skordas and Reyes was rescheduled from an earlier October date. While the Utah Debate Commission only changes debate dates in extreme circumstances, KSL-TV reported that it allowed a shift in scheduling after Reyes said he would be in Hawaii to attend his father’s funeral.

But Reyes has not confirmed he was actually out of town on the date the debate was originally scheduled — and Utah Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Merchant noted in a letter to the Utah Debate Commission on Tuesday that the attorney general’s campaign finance disclosures show he was in St. George on Oct. 1.

“All of this shows that Mr. Reyes essentially hoodwinked the Commission,” Merchant said in the letter, blaming the commission for “bending its rules to allow something like this to happen in the first place.”

The “value and objectivity” of the commission, he said “is called into question and is substantially limited” when it is “manipulated and used as a tool of Republican politicians in positions of power.”

The Utah Democratic Party also called on the Debate Commission to allow a designee from both major political parties to sit on the commission and said it should inform the public about “the misinformation and inappropriate behavior of Mr. Reyes’s campaign.”

“It is justifiable and fair to require candidates to account for and explain deception, especially when that decision is done by someone who bills himself as the State’s ‘top law enforcement officer,’” Merchant wrote.

The Salt Lake Tribune will update this report

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