Background
From 1999-2021, Kari Lake was the news anchor for Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV. She stepped down to run for Arizona Governor as a Republican. She scored Trump’s backing, and won the GOP primary. As the MAGA standard-bearer, she refused to say if she would accept the results. Full of piss and vinegar, she declared, "I'm going to win the election, and I will accept that result."
Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes. She did not lose with grace. And will still not admit what every election authority — mostly Republican — has conclusively proven. She finished second.
She went to the courts, state and federal, District and Appeals. No soap. Her attempts to deny reality were so unfounded she was admonished to stop wasting everyone’s time. After she did not, she was ordered to pay the defendant’s legal fees.
In one case, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi offered a typical judicial opinion of Lake’s legal team, including Captain Underpants Alan Dershowitz, when he said they made "false, misleading, and unsupported" assertions and claims without "an adequate factual or legal basis grounded in a reasonable pre-filing inquiry.”
He then hit them with a $122,000 fine. And said the court does not tolerate litigants "furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process".
The 2024 Senate election
Unbowed by her previous defeat and perfect record of legal failure, Lake is taking a second bite at the electoral apple. Her target is Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate seat. Sinema, who won as a Democrat in 2018, has decided trough-diving for corporate dollars did not mesh with her supposed liberal politics. She is now an Independent.
Rep. Reuben Gallego is the leading Democrat. And Lake is favored to win the GOP nomination. In addition, she is still in the running for Citizen Trump’s VP selection — although her odds are lengthening as she may be too nuts even for MAGA.
The recording
Lake’s mental and character shortcomings have despaired Arizona’s GOP, who are desperate to reverse the liberal trend in a state that once gave America the self-confessed, conservative extremist Barry Goldwater. (Mind you, he would have been aghast at today’s Christian nationalists.)
In March 2023, Jeff DeWit, then chair of the Arizona Republican Party, attempted to dissuade Lake from repeating her 2022 folly. He asked Kari to name her price to stay out of politics for two years. Unfortunately, for the hapless DeWit, Lake recorded the conversation in which he said:
“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out.”
Adding: “So the ask I got today from back East was: ‘Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?’”
In January 2024, the Daily Mail published audio of the conversation. And Arizona Republicans forced DeWit to resign.
Lake must have thought the tape would add to her MAGA cred — and she is probably right, at least nationally. But back in Arizona, things did not go as she had planned.
On the recording, she made sure to sound like a warrior for truth, justice, and the American way (as she views it) saying,
“This is about defeating Trump and I think that's a bad, bad thing for our country.”
Adding that she is not venal, “I can be bought? That's what it's about.”
Insisting she has nobler goals than a few bucks, “This is not about money, it's about our country.”
And concluding, “They’re going to have to fucking kill me to stop me.”
The reaction
Lake imagined her revelation would subdue Arizona’s Republicans and give her control of the establishment. She succeeded in driving DeWit from his position. But instead of coming to heel, right-wing Arizonans are pissed and paranoid.
Lake may have expected adulation. Instead, she got boos. As the Washington Post reported:
When Kari Lake speaks to the Republican Party faithful, she’s accustomed to cheers and adulation.
But as the Arizona Senate candidate addressed hundreds of the state GOP’s most loyal activists late last month, she was booed so loudly the sound carried through a cavernous megachurch’s auditorium into the lobby.
It was an unfamiliar greeting for Lake, an outspoken election denier and former local television anchor who just a year ago was welcomed rapturously by the same Donald Trump-supporting crowd.
Despite the boos, Lake remained stuck in her election-denial rut.
“We don’t agree on everything. But one thing we do agree on: The elections in Arizona are a corrupt mess.”
The crowd did not agree and kept expressing their dissent. Arizona’s Republican establishment had long suspected that the desert Machiavelli was fond of subterfuge and dirty tricks. The DeWit brouhaha has confirmed their suspicions. As WaPo further reported,
In interviews, a dozen Arizona Republicans — including elected officials, candidates and party donors — said they had long assumed they were being recorded when they were around Lake or speaking to her by phone. One well-known Republican, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, said the release of the DeWit recording has “totally killed” any desire to talk or text with her.
One lifelong Republican, 81-year-old Barbara Wyllie, summed up the feeling of many about Lake’s duplicity when she said:
“I don’t trust her — I am done.”
And “When she did that to Jeff DeWit, it’s like, ‘Okay, she’s wired for everybody.”
Former state House speaker Kirk Adams also weighed in:
“To the extent that people in the party have character questions and authenticity questions about Kari Lake, this story plays into those questions.”
Gary Morris, chair of the Gila County Republican Committee, said:
“Anybody that’s worked with her, and into the future, are going to wonder, ‘Is she recording me? Those who were booing felt betrayed — that outside of politics or inside of politics, you just do not audiotape somebody for personal benefit.”
Meanwhile, back in DC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee professed their belief that everything is still hunky dory out West. A person familiar with the thinking of the Senate GOP claimed — perhaps in a triumph of wishful thinking over reality:
“The NRSC is not at all concerned about Kari Lake having trouble with the base. She has some of the strongest base Teflon in the country.”
The end
It is hard to predict what will happen in November. It is not often that an incumbent elected as a party representative, but now running as an independent, faces a challenge by two major party candidates with excellent name recognition, in a swing state.
Polls indicate a close race. But who knows how reliable polls are anymore? And God only knows what other Lake machinations might roil the water — and what effect they would have on Arizona’s voters.