Trump darling Kari Lake wins Arizona GOP primary in critical race
Kari Lake (pictured) has clinched victory in her Republican primary for Arizona's Senate seat. Lake, the glamorous former broadcaster who was defeated in her 2022 bid for governor, beat out Sheriff Mark Lamb in the primary. She has been narrowly trailing Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in polling for the Arizona Senate race.
They are battling for the seat being vacated by Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema in a race that could determine who controls the upper chamber. Republicans have made Arizona a top pickup target this cycle. Former President Donald Trump was leading President Joe Biden by about six points in the RealClearPolitics average in Arizona before Biden announced he was stepping back from the race. Trump hosted a call for Lake's campaign on Monday saying she's 'fantastic,' and 'will not let us down.'
Lake, 55, saw a meteoric rise in Trump world after the 2020 election when she was one of the biggest defenders of his claims of voter fraud. She lost multiple legal challenges to the election results in her own gubernatorial race in 2022 and has not yet admitted defeat in that race.
Just last month she lost an appeals court challenge to the race arguing that thousands of Phoenix-area mail ballot signatures were not properly verified. Lake has since disavowed some of her previously held hard-right views, particularly on abortion.
She spoke out against the revival of a Civil War-era abortion ban in her state, one she'd previously hailed as a 'great law.' The law, which has since been repealed, prohibited the procedure at all stages of pregnancy except to save the life of the mother.
Her campaign website says she 'does not support a federal ban on abortion' and she's expressed support for the state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks.
It's all in an effort to moderate her image to draw in some Arizona's many independents, who make up over a third of the state's electorate. But at the same time, Lake has made efforts to fire up her MAGA base.
'We need to send people to Washington, D.C., that the swamp does not want there,' she told a crowd of Arizonans earlier this year, 'And I can think of a couple people they don't want there. First on that list is Donald J. Trump; second is Kari Lake.'
'They’re coming after us with lawfare, they’re going to come after us with everything. That’s why the next six months is going to be intense. And we need to strap on our — let’s see. What do we want to strap on? 'We’re going to strap on our, our seat belt. We’re going to put on our helmet or your Kari Lake ball cap. We are going to put on the armor of God. And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.'
Lake had a stint as a registered Democrat from 2008 to 2012 which she explained as a form of protest to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She's married to husband Jeff Halperin and the couple shares two young adult children, Ruby and Leo.
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