Kari Lake struggles to court moderates, imperiling GOP Senate pickup
Lake’s outreach has been met with skepticism after her 2022 gubernatorial campaign resulted in deep-seated resentments
By Yvonne Wingett SanchezLiz Goodwin
and
Isaac Arnsdorf
Updated December 4, 2023 at 12:06 p.m. EST|Published December 4, 2023 at 5:37 a.m. EST
PHOENIX — When she ran for governor of Arizona last year, Kari Lake unapologetically pilloried her Republican opponents with attacks that targeted not just their conservative credentials, but their personal morals and even their families.
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But now on a mission to flip a Senate seat from Arizona back to red after three cycles of GOP losses, Lake is courting some of those very same Republicans she recently denounced as “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only, hoping they will set aside hurt feelings and deep-seated resentments from her last scorched-earth campaign and unite around her candidacy.
The outreach, made over the course of several weeks through in-person meetings and phone calls, is a welcome sign to Washington Republicans, who would like to see Lake broaden her MAGA base in the once reliably red state and help them retake the U.S. Senate in 2024. But Lake’s effort to reassure political rivals and onetime supporters in this desert state has been met with skepticism, according to interviews with half a dozen Republicans familiar with her conversations who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the private talks.
Most cite her refusal to acknowledge her electoral loss — even up to today — as well as the relentless demonization of members of her own party, including former Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the late U.S. senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Lake has contacted her former primary rival, top GOP donors and past supporters, party officials and activists, and even a former senator as she tries to persuade them to coalesce around her. But Lake’s appeals for support have so far contained no actual apologies — and some Republicans say they are not likely to forgive her any time soon, complicating her path to victory in a state home to many moderate Republicans and independents whose support is key to winning. And as she continues to pursue a so-far unsuccessful legal battle to overturn her 2022 loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), national Republicans fear she may continue pursing the same type of conspiracies and election denialism that harmed her previous campaign. They have urged her to stay focused on local issues like border security and inflation.
In a brief interview with The Washington Post, Lake dismissed her outreach as routine and said she often meets with Republicans.
“This is nothing new for me,” she said. “I have been in my last campaign reaching out to all kinds of Republicans — even the ones who didn’t vote for me.”
But Republicans say the former TV news anchor realizes she has an electoral problem in Arizona and must make inroads with more moderate voters who were turned off by her false claims that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 election and by her hostile approach to Arizona rivals in 2022.
“She’s going to be the nominee unless an asteroid hits Arizona, and she’s going to need to consolidate Republicans in order to win,” Daniel Scarpinato, an Arizona Republican strategist, said. “If we’re going to talk about party unity, it’s a two-way street. At some point, people need to move on.”
“It’s going to take time for some of those wounds to heal. My advice would be keep doing it. It’s got to be something that’s consistent and not one and done.”
Kari Lake speaks with Kathy Barnette, a former Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, after the Republican presidential primary debate at in Simi Valley, California on Sept. 27, 2023. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)In addition to attacks on McCain, Lake invoked the marriage of a key primary rival, saying on social media that she had married “a Billionaire twice” her age, and that she was given a “blank check” by her husband to run for office. Her attacks on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and county recorder, which run Phoenix-area elections, contributed to right-wing outrage around the past two elections that led to death threats against some board members.
Lake, who’s been endorsed by Trump, is telling Republicans privately that her rejection of “McCain Republicans” — when she called McCain a loser and told his fans to “get the hell out” of an event on the campaign trail — took place in the context of a bruising primary campaign and was not serious.
“It was not said a week before the election, it was said a full year ahead of the election while I was taking what was the equivalent of a nuclear financial bomb of attack ads and I was an ‘America First’ Republican running against a ‘McCain Republican,’” Lake told The Post. “And it was said in jest.”
But even after that comment, she continued her attacks, telling a conservative crowd days after winning the Aug. 2, 2022, primary election that she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”
“If people are not jumping on the Lake train, it’s because they’re still reeling over what just happened,” with her gubernatorial loss in 2022, a donor who was recently contacted by the campaign said.
Lake has made an effort to convince Washington Republicans that she can carry the state this time around, meeting during a trip to D.C. in October with several Republican senators and top Mitch McConnell political allies Josh Holmes and Steven Law, who runs the powerful Senate Leadership Fund PAC.
Lake showed a clear understanding that she needed to broaden her base during the meeting with Law and Holmes, according to one person familiar with the gathering, and said she wanted to reach the state’s crucial middle-of-the-road voters. She was told not to dwell on the past — an oblique reference to her ongoing legal battle to try to overturn her election loss.
Lake also was receptive to suggestions by national Republicans to focus more on Arizona issues like the border, instead of national topics that make her look like she is “auditioning to be Donald Trump’s running mate,” the person said.
Hawley can't spit right.
Tuberville bends the knee.
