Lake Continues to Deny 2020, 2022 Elections, Leaving Voters “Well and Thoroughly Alienated”

Monday, March 11th, 2024

ARIZONA -–  Last week Kari Lake’s nightmare Senate campaign began with a report exposing Lake’s paid speech to an ‘extremist’ Texas group, , continued with the Arizona Supreme Court dismissing her request to end the defamation case against her, and ended with more election denial in a CNN interview.

Here’s what you might have missed: 

• The Arizona Republic reported that “Kari Lake received $15,000 to speak to the True Texas Project, an organization labeled an extremist, anti-government group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.” The group “drew national scrutiny for social media remarks after a 2019 massacre of Latinos that blamed the bloodshed on mass immigration, not the gunman.”
  
•  Lake “faceplant[ed] in the mad dash to whitewash her extremism” when the Arizona Supreme Court dismissed her request to end the defamation case against her. The court case is “one of the ways that voters in Maricopa, the state’s most populous county, could be reminded of Lake’s assault on their voting system.”
  
• Lake was then called out (again) for alienating Arizonans as her talk of unifying the party “seems more a script than a genuine understanding of what it will take to win over those voters she so well and thoroughly alienated.”
  
• Turmoil hit Lake’s campaign again mid-week when she faced questions over her campaign’s ties to a white nationalist and her use of campaign funds to pay her own family business.
  
• At the Capitol, Lake again asserted the 2020 election was stolen and refused to answer when asked about her repeated claim that her own election was stolen.
  
• Over the weekend, Lake appeared on CNN and said – again – that the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen as she continued to “air election grievances” even as “GOP leaders urge her to look forward.” WATCH: 

Kari Lake: “The 2020 election, I think it was a rigged election.”

Kari Lake on the 2022 election: “We had major problems in our election.”

• At the end of Lake’s bad week, an Arizona pollster raised the alarm on her campaign saying that candidates like her “have not been able to really attract those large swaths of independent and unaffiliated voters” and pointing out that Lake will face problems because “she’s still lashing out against Republicans… it’s really a difficult place that she’s put herself in.”

Read more: Arizona Republic: Kari Lake 2.0 wants a new 2022 election? So much for moving on, Axios: U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake pivots back to stolen election rhetoric, MSNBC: Kari Lake faceplants in the mad dash to whitewash her extremism, Arizona Republic: Kari Lake’s back on the air, this time talking far-right topics on online show, Arizona Republic: Kari Lake’s charm offensive is more offensive than charming for moderate Republicans, Washington Post: Kari Lake struggles to court moderates, imperiling GOP Senate pickup, POLITICO: When QAnon fundraises for Kari Lake … she shows up, Arizona Republic: Kari Lake defends Jan. 6 Capitol rioters on the Senate campaign trail