For Immediate Release
Tuesday, November 21st, 2023
Contact: Olivia Taylor-Puckett, otpuckett@azdem.org
New Reports Highlight Lake Campaigning Outside AZ, Continued Election Conspiracy Theories

ARIZONA -– Today, two new reports highlight ongoing trends in Kari Lake’s candidacy – her self-promotional campaign events outside of Arizona, and her continued focus on election conspiracy theories, after she made the “shortest political pivot in history.”

• Vanity Fair became the latest outlet to highlight how Lake isn’t campaigning in Arizona, writing that “the cross-country itinerary she’s mapped out to promote her campaign appears better suited for someone with national aspirations or a book to sell.”

• Axios Phoenix became the latest outlet to observe Lake’s return to pushing discredited election conspiracies, writing her “attempted pivot away from the controversial issues that isolated independents and moderate Republicans in 2022 was short-lived.”

These new reports add to the Arizona columnists, reporters, and commentators who have highlighted how Kari Lake is running the same failed playbook that lost her the 2022 campaign, that she “never really stopped” going after Arizonans, and that she is not “going to trick anyone into believing that she’s anyone other than she who she is” –- which is “still an extremist.”

Read the new reports for yourself:

Axios Phoenix: U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake pivots back to stolen election rhetoric

By: Jessica Boehm

November 21st, 2023

Key Points:

• Kari Lake’s attempted pivot away from the controversial issues that isolated independents and moderate Republicans in 2022 was short-lived.

• At public events since her campaign launch — many of which have been out of state — Lake has appeared with election deniers, including the filmmaker behind the debunked conspiracy documentary “2000 Mules.” And she’s reverted to more dramatic rhetoric.

• What they’re saying: “People will say to me, “Oh, you’ve given up on the election now.” And I say … No, I haven’t, but I’m a multitasker. I can do more than one thing,” Lake said at Walk-A-Con, an event in Florida celebrating “individuals walking away from the Democratic Party.”

• She went on to say that people who question her should be “putting their money where [their] mouth is” by donating to defendants facing charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and to cases that seek to overturn the 2022 election.

• She name-dropped her legal fundraising arm, Save Arizona Fund, which is footing the bill for her ongoing election lawsuits.

• Meanwhile, Lake is still in court asking to be declared the rightful governor of Arizona.

• Earlier this month, the State Bar of Arizona confirmed it’s investigating Lake’s attorneys. In response, Lake told the Arizona Sun Times: “I will represent myself before I drop the case.”

• Zoom in: The Lake campaign did not answer specific questions about her election rhetoric […]

• Lisa James, a longtime Arizona Republican consultant, tells Axios Phoenix. […]  she “doesn’t seem to be able to help herself.”

• “If that’s her primary message, she needs to reconsider.”

Vanity Fair: Kari Lake’s Senate Bid Is Giving Off Trump-Veep Vibes: “She’s Hedging Her Bets”

By: Caleb Ecarma

November 20th, 2023

Key Points:

• Kari Lake is ostensibly running for a US Senate seat in Arizona, but the cross-country itinerary she’s mapped out to promote her campaign appears better suited for someone with national aspirations or a book to sell.

• Lake engaged in the characteristically Trumpian maneuver of refusing to concede defeat, claiming the election was tainted by fraud and misconduct. Her various attempts to prove that argument in court have thus far ended in failure. Nevertheless, she has illegitimately claimed the title of Arizona’s “lawful governor.”

• “The problem with Kari is she’s just got this real ‘look at me’ thing going on, and I just don’t think she’s earned it [.]”

• Her obsession with election denialism has significantly hurt her favorability marks among two key demographics in Arizona, according to Mike Noble, a nonpartisan pollster.

• “With Lake, it’s the definition of insanity—trying the same strategy and hoping for a different outcome,” Noble said, referencing her stubborn election denialism.

But wait, there’s more:

Arizona Agenda on KJZZ: “We’ve already moved on to Kari Lake 3.0. That 2.0 version where she was kind of making nice with some of the Republicans that she had trashed for the last year or two and not talking about election fraud for that brief window has passed. We’re back to the old Kari Lake. You can call it 1.0 or 3.0.”

Daily Kos: Senate Republicans have a Kari Lake problem in Arizona.

• Arizona Republic: According to a national Republican strategist, who is familiar with Lake’s relationships with national Republicans, GOP leaders have urged her not to continue to litigate the 2022 election and would prefer that she focus on her Senate run.

• Arizona Daily Independent: From a GOP pollster: “The problem Kari Lake faces is that she is the best known of the candidates and the least liked,” […]  “Lake, on the other hand, spent her entire campaign for Governor attacking groups of Republicans and never really stopped, even after the campaign was over.”

• Former Republican State School Superintendent Jaime Molera on KJZZ:  “She’s trying to soften her image here in Arizona with the McCain base. I’m not so sure how much that will work. Especially … when you look at the vitriol she’s spewed on John McCain over the last few years. I’m not, I don’t think a lot of his supporters will turn around and say, “You know what? She’s not that bad.”

###