Dem
51
GOP
49
Donald Trump's endorsement got Kari Lake the GOP nomination for governor of Arizona. Fine. Good start for the would-be governor, specially since she had zero experience in politics or with campaigning. After the primary was over, her advisors urged to move to the center to pick up independents in the general election because they knew that Trump's base probably wasn't big enough to win a general election. She refused.
Business leaders in Arizona told her to tone it down and stop attacking businesses. She refused that, too. Strategists warned her about denigrating early voting, which is very popular in Arizona. She kept doing it. People told her to stop talking about 2020 and start talking about what she would do as governor. Nope again. Her whole campaign was about white grievances. It didn't work.
Lake was dead set on parroting Trump and settling scores that she never reached out to conservative Republicans who hadn't consumed the MAGA Kool-Aid, let alone independents and Democrats. In fact, she was so fixated on fighting McCain Republicans that at one rally she told the audience that if there were any McCain Republicans in the room, to leave now. It's pretty rare for a general-election candidate to tell members of his or her own party to scram. That's not thought to be a great vote getter.
In the end, Lake got her wish, kind of. McCain Republicans showed up to vote—only not for her. She ran 120,000 votes behind Kimberly Yee (R), who was reelected state treasurer. That means 120,000 Republicans came out to vote, just not for her. Take that, McCain Republicans! Lake lost by 17,000 votes. According to our staff mathematician, 17,000 < 120,000. Maybe if Lake hadn't told the McCain Republicans to buzz off, she would have won. Her campaign's policy director, Sam Stone, tried to deflect criticism from Lake and her campaign by saying many Arizonans just didn't want to vote for Trump or a Trump-allied candidate. Of course, Lake didn't have to be aligned with Trump. That was her choice.
Another choice was to sensationalize everything and go full-culture wars all the time. She vilified drag queens, even though she once hosted a drag queen show at her own home. She also wanted to go scorched earth on everything, despite her staff telling her not to.
Lake also decided to make a point about going back to the 1950s when women apparently wore tight dresses and high heels to vacuum the carpet before their husband and master came home from work. It is hard to imagine a photo more designed to drive away women than this one:
Some people called this "Servant leadership." Others said it was just plain "bootlicking."
Lake was so sure of that she was right and all of her advisors were wrong (even though she had never campaigned before and many of them had), that she spent time and energy endorsing other "winners" like Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. She not only endorsed Blake Masters in Arizona, but even gave some of her campaign contributions to him, so sure was she of an easy win.
Early on in the campaign, Lake began working on her transition, picking people to run all the state agencies. There is an old saying to the effect of: "Don't sell the skin of the bear before you have killed the bear." In her arrogance, she missed that one. Even after the election she was in complete denial. Four days after the election, her would-be chief of staff tried to break the news to her gently that it was over and that she had lost. Lake started to cry but, even after that, she didn't concede. Instead she filed lawsuits that are certain to be thrown out. In the end, a lot of her problems were due to her belief that she knew everything better than everyone else, even though they had lots of experience in politics and she had none. Sounds like vice presidential material on the Trump ticket to us. (V)