For Immediate Release
Tuesday, December 5th, 2023
Contact: Olivia Taylor-Puckett, otpuckett@azdem.org
ICYMI: “Kari Lake’s charm offensive is more offensive than charming” [Laurie Roberts for Arizona Republic]

ARIZONA -– Kari Lake’s nightmare Senate campaign continues to struggle as new reporting indicates her efforts to court Arizona voters are not going well. Today, Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts writes that “Kari Lake’s charm offensive is more offensive than charming.”

Lake’s apparent inability to grow her base of support in Arizona, on the heels of reports highlighting her frequent campaign stops outside of Arizona and her “shortest political pivot in history,” is the most recent example of why Kari Lake’s campaign is a nightmare for the GOP.

Read more about Lake’s failed “charm offensive:”
Arizona Republic Opinion: Kari Lake’s charm offensive is more offensive than charming

By: Laurie Roberts

December 5th, 2023

Key Points:

• Kari Lake seems surprised that Republicans she excoriated last year aren’t lining up to support her Senate campaign. Somebody needs a reality check.

• The Kari Lake charm offensive doesn’t appear to be going so well.

• Apparently, it’s more difficult than it looks to win over people you previously called gold diggers, doormats and losers.

• Several people contacted by Lake have told me that she has no clue how deeply her attacks cut them.

• Her refusal to apologize — or even recognize the impact of her slash-and-burn campaign for governor — has left them and other Republicans flabbergasted and questioning how she can win over more moderate Republicans and independents as she now campaigns for the U.S. Senate.

• “Her charm offensive has turned out to be offensive with no charm,” one Republican elected official told me.

• Lake on Tuesday seemed perplexed that any Republican would have a problem embracing her campaign for the Senate.

• “I have never thought of myself as divisive … ,” she wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

• If former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon’s reaction is any measure of what Lake is up against, she’s got a substantial slab of egg to chisel off her face.

• “Short of an engraved apology, I wouldn’t consider helping her with anything,” Salmon told the Washington Post.

• “She employs the politics of personal destruction, and she’ll say anything — the most vile things in the world — to get ahead. And I’m sorry, I just can’t forget that.”

• During last year’s campaign for governor, candidate Salmon was critical of Lake’s proposal to set up video cameras in all public school classrooms in order to root out “woke” teachers and their secret plan to indoctrinate our children in leftie ideas.

• Salmon knocked her plan as a “knee-jerk reaction” and “very poorly thought out.”

• Lake’s response was to retweet an accusation that Salmon is “okay with special needs kids being raped.” […]

• Lake met with Karrin Taylor Robson last month.

• According to the Post, Lake asked for Taylor Robson’s support, which is bold given that just last year Lake had this to say about her opponent for governor, an accomplished businesswoman whose Republican credentials are impeccable:

• “I just think it’s disgusting that an open-borders, Ducey-clone RINO is trying to buy the election with her 95-yr-old husband’s millions,” Lake said at the time. “And the people of Arizona deserve to know about it.” […]
• Nobody would blame Taylor Robson for telling Lake to pound sand, which is apparently what she did, though in the politest way possible.

• Cue the Post: “When Lake asked Taylor Robson for her support, Taylor Robson responded by saying that she would be closely monitoring Lake’s race, but that her priority was helping Republicans maintain control of the state legislature.”

• The Post reports that Lake also has reached out to former Sen. Jon Kyl, who served for more than a decade in the U.S. Senate alongside that “loser” John McCain.

• The two haven’t met, and Kyl wouldn’t talk to the Post about it.

• My guess would be that Kyl hasn’t forgotten her sneering view of the “party of McCain” as she invited the late senator’s supporters to “get the hell out” of one of her campaign events.  

• “Boy, Arizona has delivered some losers, haven’t they?” she said to applause from the MAGA faithful […]

• All that’s left to wonder about is how Lake can possibly repair the GOP bridges she so badly burned in 2022 […]

• Then there is Lake, who not only hasn’t issued any apologies — public or private — but seems perplexed that any Republican would have a problem with her campaign by character assassination. It’s not personal, she tells them […]

• Right, because “they” — the gold diggers and RINOs and doormats — are the problem.

• Just ask Karrin Taylor Robson or Matt Salmon.

• Ask Cindy McCain, who Lake implicated in a globalist plot to destroy America.

• Or Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer, both of whom Lake has accused of being criminals because she can’t accept that she lost last year’s election.

• Ask Kathy Petsas, a lifelong Republican activist who questioned Lake’s McCain comments and was advised by the Lake campaign that “You’re exactly the type of demographic that we feel no need to appeal to.”

• Or former Gov. Doug Ducey, who Lake accused of supporting open borders and being a “doormat” to the Mexican drug cartels.

• That Kari Lake has never thought of herself as divisive is, well, wow.

• Just … wow.

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