The former FOX 10 Phoenix anchored Lake Kari.Mother Jones illustration; Christopher Brown/ZUMA
After it was spread unfounded claims for voter fraud in the Arizona primary, Republican Cary Lake won nomination of her party. The Donald Trump-backed candidate and former FOX 10 Phoenix anchor defeated real estate developer Karrin Taylor Robson, who received approvals by former Vice President Mike Pence and current Governor Doug Ducey and invested $15 million of her own campaign money. Lake, a staunch supporter of the Big Lie, was the pioneer, building her campaign around Trump’s stamp of approval — and the support of election naysayers like Rep. Paul Gosar, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and My Pillow’s Mike Liddell. Lake campaigned on conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant rhetoric and anti-border enforcement, and repudiated the very media that gave her a platform.
Lake announced she is running for governor three months after her 22-year career at the Fox affiliate ended. In a video announcing her resignation, Lake said she no longer approved of the direction of journalism and that the media needed more balanced and diverse opinions. “Not everyone is committed to telling the truth, but thankfully many of you have figured that out,” he said. “I promise you: If you hear it from my lips, it will be true.” Keep call the media the “enemy of the people” and appeared in a campaign video smashing televisions while vowing to take a “sledgehammer to the left’s lies and propaganda”. Her conversion from TV personality to media racist appeared to be a strategy intended to turn a “potential liability with Republican voters into an asset,” as Melanie Mason writes in the Los Angeles Times.
Kari Lake has been arguing for weeks about fraud and irregularities in her *primary* election — yet, below, she is unable to offer a single specific allegation and refuses to answer why she wouldn’t get such information to the authorities. https://t.co/wxi4z0X2Ha
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) August 2, 2022
In various circumstances during the campaign, Lake has he hinted in alleged attempts to steal the primaries, but refused to provide any evidence to support her claims. “I’m not going to elaborate on that,” he said recently he said on a radio show. “We are into some things that are very suspicious and possibly illegal. We are working on it. I don’t want to ruin the research.” The chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections in the state’s largest county, called her claims “beyond irresponsible”. As part of her election platform of integrity, Lake has suggested ban on ballot counting machines.
In the past, Lake has asked for it imprisonment of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who certified the 2020 election results and is now running for governor. The Daily Beast is described Lake as “Exhibit A in the Trump team’s plan to install friendly governors in states to potentially swing votes in his favor in 2024.”
On Wednesday, as votes were still being counted, Lake once again cast doubt on her own race. That didn’t stop her stating an early win just took the lead. “I’m not satisfied with how the election was conducted,” Lake said he said RealAmerica’s Voice. “We had big issues yesterday, big issues and they are being reported by everyday voters. We need to reform our elections so that every Arizonan, whether Democrat, Independent or Republican, goes to bed on election night knowing the winner and being satisfied that it was a fair election. We don’t have it right now.”
