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In a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the Gilbert Republican said the station acted improperly in its 2022 decision to give a half-hour interview to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs after she refused to debate GOP opponent Kari Lake. That, he said, violated the agreement KAET had with the Citizens Clean Elections Commission to deny such an opportunity to those who would not face their foes.

Lake also was given an opportunity for a 30-minute interview with Ted Simons, who hosts the station’s public affairs program. But she refused after hearing that KAET was giving Hobbs an interview despite her refusing to participate in the debate as required under the Clean Elections rules.

Worse, Petersen said, is that documents unearthed by The Arizona Republic found that Arizona State University President Michael Crow was involved at least indirectly in the decision to give airtime to Hobbs, at one point talking about the “election denier issue.’’ That referred to the fact that Lake was campaigning for governor on the false claim that Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden in Arizona in the 2020 presidential race despite official results and several lawsuits confirming Biden’s win.

The newspaper also found that Mi-Ai Parrish, who had headed ASU’s media enterprise operations, had told the head of the Clean Elections Commission that putting “a person on television with those views was wrong.’’

All that was illegal, Petersen contends.

A spokesman for Scott Woelful, the station manager, said Wednesday there would be no comment. There were no immediate responses from representatives of ASU itself.

In his letter to Carr, the Arizona Senate president, who is running for state attorney general, cited a 1998 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which said broadcasters “cannot grant or deny access to a candidate debate on the basis of whether it agrees with a candidate’s views.’’ The court said such viewpoint discrimination would present “an inevitability of skewing the electoral dialogue.’’

Petersen said internal emails showed that ASU officials were convinced Hobbs would win, even after refusing to debate Lake. In the end, Hobbs won by 17,116 votes out of nearly 2.6 million votes cast.

“Based on emails between top university officials, Arizona PBS made broadcast decisions based on how it viewed Kari Lake’s positions on election integrity and Katie Hobbs’ electoral prospects,’’ Petersen wrote.

“The FCC should investigate Arizona PBS’ blatant viewpoint discrimination against Kari Lake and partisan calculations designed to benefit Katie Hobbs,’’ Petersen said.

He said he is seeking “appropriate enforcement action, including license revocation, to protect the public interest and ensure that Arizonans will not be subjected to biased media manipulation in the future.’’