Kari Lake on Tuesday won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Arizona, setting her up to face off in November’s general election against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who ran uncontested for his party’s nomination. The winner will replace outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who said in March she would not seek reelection.
Lake, a former local news anchor, has made a name for herself as a hard-right Republican in Donald Trump’s mold ― not only amplifying his lies about the 2020 election being stolen, but saying the same about her own unsuccessful race for governor in 2022. (Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, defeated Lake by 17,000 votes.) Lake played a video of Trump endorsing her when she launched her campaign in October, and Trump again voiced his support for Lake in a call with supporters Monday.
Lake is currently still litigating the last election — as the defendant in an ongoing defamation lawsuit from Stephen Richer, a Republican and the elected recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county. After Lake accused Richer of intentionally sabotaging the 2022 election, Richer sued for defamation. In March, Lake declined to defend herself against Richer’s suit, calling it a “perversion of our legal system.” Discovery is ongoing in the dispute.
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Lake was widely expected to beat Republican challenger Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County, in the Senate primary. The real question in some analysts’ minds was just how much Lake would win by ― and whether it would be enough to make her a compelling general-election candidate.
“Kari Lake can’t just win the July 30 Republican Senate primary,” Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote Tuesday morning. “She’s got to blow Mark Lamb’s cowboy hat into the next time zone.”
Republican consultants told Roberts that Lake would do well to earn upward of 55% of the primary vote, in order to show she can unite the state’s Republican Party against Gallego in the general election.
In head-to-head general-election polling, Gallego currently has an edge over Lake, and held a lead even before Sinema announced her departure.
That’s in part because of Lake’s brand of Trumpism, which includes election denial, border hysteria and attacking the late GOP Sen. John McCain (something she later tried to walk back). This approach is popular with a portion of Arizona’s Republicans, but it’s not necessarily the ticket to statewide office, as Lake found out two years ago when she lost the governorship to Hobbs.
