GOP Strategist Brett Marson: “I don’t know how one erases all the brutal things that she has said over the last year and a half or two years.”

Wednesday, March 6th, 2024

ARIZONA -–  As Kari Lake fundraises with national Republicans today, her campaign remains their worst nightmare as she is “still an extremist” and “far-right conspiracy theorist” who “just can’t help herself.” Lake will say or do anything to advance her own political career, but she still faces questions in Arizona about her ability to unite the party and “win over those all-important moderate Republicans and independents she trashed.”

Read more about Kari Lake’s power hungry quest to boost her own career and the questions she faces about her inability to focus on the issues that matter to Arizonans: 

Lake’s campaign is a nightmare for Republicans as she continues to relitigate her failed 2022 gubernatorial election and promote conspiracy theories:

• Prior to Lake’s campaign launch, national Republicans publicly urged her to stop litigating past elections. But since her launch, Lake has proved she is “still an extremist” who has  “reverted to more dramatic rhetoric.”
• After her launch, Lake continued to push unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud.
• Recently, Lake lied and claimed she does not bring up election conspiracy theories – before bringing them up eight times in the following two weeks.
• Just yesterday, Lake insisted “Biden could not have won 81 million votes in 2020,” and when asked “if she still thinks President Biden and Gov. Katie Hobbs didn’t win Arizona” Lake said, “Next question.”

Lake holds dangerous views on abortion, including supporting a “draconian” ban on abortion without exceptions for rape and incest:

• Just three weeks after announcing her campaign for Senate, Lake said of her extreme abortion stance, “I haven’t changed, actually.”
• Kari Lake has a yearslong, on-camera, record of praising Arizona’s “draconian” territorial abortion ban, saying abortion is “not health care,” and she “very much support[s]” banning medication abortion. 
• Kari Lake’s says abortion is “killing,” “sacrifice,” “execution,” and the “ultimate sin.” 

Lake has never stopped associating with extremists and conspiracy theorists:

• Lake’s fundraiser are hosted by “the wife of controversial ‘finfluencer’” and “wealthy QAnon supporters,” and are the “latest example of Lake […] undermining the notion that she’s distancing herself from sources of potential controversy to appease national Republicans.”
• Kari Lake defends Jan. 6 Capitol rioters on the Senate campaign trail.
• Lake refused to clarify whether a white nationalist groyper works for her campaign or not.
• Kari Lake’s “The Kari Lake Show” on a new far-right online network, where she continues to “burnish her credentials with the far right even as GOP leaders have hoped she would focus her campaign on issues more likely to resonate with the broader public in Arizona.”

Kari Lake has alienated Arizona Republicans and “can’t just snap [her] fingers and disappear” her dangerous, unpopular record on abortion and election conspiracy theories as she is causing trust issues in the Arizona GOP:

• On KJZZ, Lorna Romero Ferguson, Republican consultant, said, “A few months ago, we were talking about how she was making the attempt — and I do this in air quotes — to appeal to a broader audience and more of the moderate, centrist Republicans. This isn’t the way to do it necessarily, with this kind of narrative and these talking points. And so I’m not sure what the long-term strategy is […] I don’t think it’s going to work out for her this upcoming election cycle.”
• “Kari Lake is Toast,” according to one veteran Scottsdale Republican. 
• GOP Strategist Barrett Marson to Arizona Republic: “I have no f—ing idea of how she can erase two years of just the most vitriolic statements on the RINOs and moderate McCain wing of the Arizona Republican Party and independents, for that matter,” […] “I don’t know how one erases all the brutal things that she has said over the last year and a half or two years.”