Friday, September 27th, 2024

ARIZONA -– “Another day, another heaping helping of disaster” for Kari Lake as this week her campaign was awarded “Best Dumpster Fire,” over 100 Arizona moms launch a coalition against her, pundits say she is not an “intellectual powerhouse” and the “self-imposed stake to the heart of Lake’s campaign comes down to one simple thing: Likeability.”

Kari Lake won “Best Dumpster Fire” in the Phoenix New Times’s “Best of Phoenix” list because her campaign for U.S. Senate is defined by “turbulence, inconsistency, unforced errors and lies:”

• Newscaster-turned-MAGA-fanatic Kari Lake just cannot stop being a mess. The defining feature of her campaign for a U.S. Senate seat has been marked by turbulence, inconsistency, unforced errors and lies. 

• After handily losing the 2022 election for governor to Katie Hobbs, Lake was claiming she won and suing as late as July 2024, even though the courts have consistently rejected her outrageous, evidence-free claims. 

• She kept changing her public stance on abortion, which led to questions from the conservative base on the campaign trail. She spoke in front of a Confederate flag at an event and attended a fundraiser at the house of a wealthy conspiracy theorist couple. Lake was loudly booed at an annual meeting of the Arizona Republican Party. She was caught in a lie that she did not collect speaking fees from several appearances and was out fundraised by Democrat Ruben Gallego. 

• And yet, these events only scratch the surface. No one in Arizona is able to match Lake in running such a deeply chaotic public campaign.

Over one hundred Arizona moms launched “Moms Against Kari Lake” because “we don’t need this in Arizona; Kari Lake is dangerous for Arizona’s health:”

• The Arizona Democratic Party today launched Moms Against Kari Lake, a coalition of over 100 mothers and grandmothers from across Arizona in defiance of the GOP Senate candidate.

• “I personally need to trust and invest my vote in a candidate who expresses empathy and compassion, and I have yet to find those qualities in Kari Lake,” Paloma Greenwald, 25, a mother from Surprise, said in a statement.

• “We need congressional representation for women, equality for women, and support for women’s healthcare. We don’t need this in Arizona; Kari Lake is dangerous for Arizona’s health,” said Laura Masters, a mother from Rimrock, who’s concerned by Lake’s flip-flopping stance on abortion rights in the state…

National Review reporter John Fund said “I’m not a fan of Kari Lake, nor do I think that she has the legal and intellectual powerhouse,” and Barry Markson said on KTAR that Mark Robinson “is North Carolina’s Kari Lake. Just another unbelievable […] these unbelievably ridiculous, extreme candidates…”

Laurie Roberts, of Arizona Republic’s Opinion, writes “another day, another heaping helping of disaster” for Kari Lake as “Lake ‘drove a stake’ through her campaign. Somewhere, McCain is laughing:”

• …Another day, another heaping helping of disaster for Arizona’s reigning queen of the Make America Great Again movement.

• When this election is over, Republicans really should begin asking themselves when and if they ever want to win again — because if it wasn’t clear after already losing two Senate seats and every key statewide office, it’s about to become undeniably clear to all but the fiercest MAGA diehards.

• Moderates. Aren’t. Going. To. Support. A. Far-Right. Firebrand.

• With just 13 days until early voting begins, every Republican operative I’ve talked to says this race is over.

• “As Al McCoy would have said, ‘You can put that one in the deep freeze,’” longtime Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin said.

• “She is probably beyond help by now,” echoed Republican strategist Barrett Marson…

• Independents — the ones who decide Arizona’s races — are breaking 2-1 for Gallego (64% to 32%).

• The real, self-imposed stake to the heart of Lake’s campaign comes down to one simple thing: Likeability.

• Simply put, most Arizona residents don’t. Like her, that is.

• After two years of virtual nonstop campaigning, Lake has succeeded in boosting the number of people who don’t like her by nine points — from 42% in September 2022, shortly after she drove her celebrated stake into the heart of the “McCain machine” while running for governor, to 51% now.

• Lake is viewed favorably by just 39% of Arizona residents, according to the poll…

• “I don’t think there’s enough money and time for Lake to rehabilitate her image,” Republican consultant Tyler Montague told me.

• I picture the late Sen. John McCain, somewhere in the hereafter, laughing his head off.