Arizona Republican Kari Lake, a far-right ally of Donald Trump, has finally stopped claiming the 2020 election was stolen as she turns her attention to a Senate run.
She announced her candidacy for her party’s U.S. Senate nomination Tuesday at a raucous Scottsdale rally near Phoenix.
During a 50-minute speech announcing her run, she appeared to move away from the central theme of her disastrous gubernatorial campaign last year.
Lake, a former television news anchor at a Fox network station in Phoenix, ran for governor of Arizona in 2022 and lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs. She was hailed as a charismatic presence on the campaign trail, but was one of several candidates closely aligned with Trump who flopped at the polls.
The Republican still has not officially conceded defeat in that race, following former President Trump’s practice of falsely claiming that his 2020 presidential election loss was the result of widespread fraud.
Republican candidate Kari Lake announced her plans to run for the Arizona Senate seat at a rally Tuesday in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Kari Lake points to supporters as she announces her plans to run for the Arizona Senate seat
At her rally, Lake didn’t admit she lost the last election, but she also didn’t say it was stolen and made only a brief mention of it during a nearly 50-minute speech.
She said she would ‘never walk away from the fight to restore fair elections. I will never stop until every voter feels confident that their one legitimate vote counts.’
“We did everything right, and we saw the disaster of Election Day in Arizona,” Lake said. “Sometimes when things don’t go the way we expect, we find ourselves questioning and asking why…I think God has bigger plans for us.”
During her speech earlier this week, Lake tried to reach across party lines and shift focus from election fraud to more related concerns: gas prices and the current crisis at the border.
“There’s not a gas pump out there for Republicans, and one for Democrats, right?” Lake said. “There is not an inflation rate for Republicans, and then a separate one for Democrats. All Arizonans are feeling the strain of Biden’s reckless spending.’
“When I’m back in the White House, I need strong fighters like Kari in the Senate,” Trump said during a taped message
Lake announced her candidacy for her party’s Senate nomination at a raucous Scottsdale rally near Phoenix
Speaking to the crowd, Lake said she missed Trump’s vile tweets as she lashed out at the press, calling them “fake news fools” and vowed to “stop the push for communism.”
Lake is closely aligned with Trump, who so far leads the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. In the past she has reportedly glowingly referred to him as ‘Superman’.
Speaking to the crowd, Lake said she missed Trump’s vile tweets as she lashed out at the press, calling them “fake news fools” and vowing to “stop the push for communism.”
She played a recorded video endorsement of Trump.
“When I’m back in the White House, I need strong fighters like Kari in the Senate,” Trump said.
Lake also offered conciliatory words to voters who disagreed with her, a sharp contrast to her previous campaign, when she refused support from established Republicans even after defeating them in the GOP primary.
“I may not agree with Arizonans who voted for Joe Biden,” Lake said. ‘But I don’t think you are a threat to democracy. You are a citizen just like me.’
A former television news anchor for nearly three decades in the Phoenix market, Lake was already locally known but had no national profile when she walked away from her career in 2021, declaring that “journalism is dead” and a took sledgehammers to televisions showing cable news broadcasts. .
Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake greets supporters after her bid for the seat of US Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced.
Lake is closely aligned with Trump, who so far leads the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. In the past she reportedly glowingly referred to him as ‘Superman’
Up until Election Day, she embraced Trump, appearing with right-wing figures like Steve Bannon and Republicans, including the late Sen. John McCain, explode. She lost the governor’s race by less than 1 point.
About four in 10 Arizona voters in the 2022 election said they were “very concerned” that Lake’s views were too extreme. But Lake has become a national figure on the far right with her television appearances and her defense of Trump’s election fraud.
In the months since, Lake has traveled extensively to speak to Republican groups around the country, her comments largely focused on her fraudulent election claims. Her frequent trips to Iowa, the state where she was born but also hosts the leading presidential caucuses, have raised eyebrows in political circles.
Some have floated her as a candidate for Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Arizona’s race could be a highly competitive three-way general election race in November 2024.
During her speech earlier this week, Lake tried to reach across party lines, shifting focus from election fraud to more related concerns: gas prices and the current crisis at the border
Arizona is already one of the most politically competitive US states, but its Senate race became even more so after Senator Kyrsten Sinema dropped her Democratic affiliation in December and declared herself an independent.
Sinema has not said whether he will seek re-election, but Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a liberal and former Marine with Iraq war experience, is making a bid for the Democratic nomination for that seat.
Arizona is one of eight competitive seats Democrats will defend in 2024 as they try to protect their narrow 51-49 Senate majority.
The state shares about 370 miles of its border with Mexico and immigration is sure to be one of the main topics in the Senate race.
Some establishment Republicans have worried that if she wins the nomination, Lake’s fiery, hard-right, election-denying views might not sit well with some of the state’s voters.
‘There is an incursion at the Arizona border NOW. Kyrsten Sinema and Ruben Gallego repeatedly voted AGAINST funding the border wall. They rubber-stamped this open borders agenda. Arizonans are sick of it,’ Lake said on X on Monday.
Lake joins a handful of aspiring Republican hopefuls, including Mark Lamb, a sheriff in Pinal County, which is located between Phoenix and Tucson, and businessman Brian Wright