PHOENIX — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has an image problem with some Arizona voters that she’ll need to erase if she is to win November’s election against her Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.
That’s the conclusion of political observers from both sides of the aisle.
Her most likely chance to do that will be in an Oct. 9 televised debate that she finally agreed to participate in late last week.
But Lake’s initial response to the Arizona Clean Elections Commission debate deal shows she hasn’t broken free of her tendency to be just a bomb-thrower while showing little policy chops or ability to moderate her tone to win undecided voters in the political middle.
Lake, in a tweet just this week she deleted and then reposted, took aim at Gallego, saying that Arizonans “deserve to see the difference between common sense and radicalism.”
The next two lines in the tweet, though, show Lake just can’t avoid making the petty schoolyard barbs that she’s embraced since entering the 2022 governor’s race and continued in her Senate campaign. Those antics have hurt her with those middle-of-the-road voters.
“I’ll look Ruben in the eye & tell him exactly how I feel about his policies,’’ she wrote. “However, to make that happen, I can’t wear heels.’’
That reference to Gallego’s diminutive stature was the kind of barb that has hurt her, along with a years-long court battle she is still waging after refusing to concede her clear loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the 2022 governor’s race and her policy flip-flops on topics like Arizona’s now repealed total abortion ban.
Gallego had readily agreed to the debate organized by the state commission by the Aug. 16 deadline, while Lake dithered and requested a week-long extension before finally agreeing to appear on the stage with two moderators chosen by Clean Elections.
On Friday, she reposted that interview she did with a conservative group where she repeated the reference to Gallego’s height and said she wanted more debates.
“I’ll do 10 debates if he wants to,’’ Lake said. “I want people to know there’s a huge difference here,’’ ticking off her “America First’’ agenda.
The delay in agreeing to the Clean Elections debate baffled some Arizona political observers, since Lake clearly needs to boost her policy image, and a formal debate has the ability to do that. Whether she embraces that chance is the wildcard since she’s consistently refused to moderate her tone, both in 2022 and this year.
For Lake to break out in a debate, she’ll need to ditch those antics and focus on policy, longtime Republican political consultant Chris Baker said.
Behind in the polls and with far less cash or national fundraising prowess than Gallego, Lake needs to convince wavering voters in her own party and independents inclined to vote Republican that’s she’s serious about enacting conservative policy in Washington.
“Not just talking about it, not just making appearances, not just stirring up people for attention,’’ Baker said.
Lake’s problem is with some suburban Arizona voters who watched her 2022 campaign and are hesitant to vote for her this year because she’s shown no sign of a real change.
“I think she has it in her to be a serious candidate and talk serious about policy,’’ Baker said. “But suburban Republican voters have shown now for going on three elections that they want substance — they don’t just want talk and flash,’’ he said. “And she needs to cross that bridge.’’
A particular issue that could boost Lake’s standing in a debate would be a focus on economic policy and conveying a real plan to address inflation, Baker said.
“I think if she does that and does it well for the next 2 1/2 months, she might have a chance,’’ he said.
Gallego, a five-term congressman representing a heavily Democratic south Phoenix district, has been working for two years to cast aside his liberal background and show voters statewide that he’ll be a moderate Senator.
He has leaned into his family narrative: raised by a poor single mother, making it into Harvard University, then joining the Marine Corps and going to war when he had much more lucrative and less dangerous options.
And in the debate and beyond, Gallego must capture the same voters that Lake is chasing.
He’s increasingly focused on not only his personal narrative but on policy — education, federal regulatory overreach, the fentanyl crisis and more, in an effort to show he’s an Arizona moderate palatable to voters. He’s championed solutions for veteran’s issues, highlighting them in a primetime speech at Thursday night’s Democratic National Convention.’’
“He needs to convince those very same independent voters, those undecided voters, that he is more in line with Kyrsten Sinema-type politics than with AOC-type (liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.) or Kamala Harris-type policy,” Baker said.
Sinema, the Arizona senator who declined to seek re-election after defecting from the Democratic Party and turning independent in late 2022, started her political career as a liberal in the Arizona state Legislature. Once reaching Congress in 2011, Sinema recast herself as a moderate and continued moving to the center after winning her U.S. Senate seat in 2018.
That moderate tack could be what’s needed to win statewide in Arizona, which was a longtime Republican stronghold until the past decade, when changing demographics tilted the state and it became a presidential battleground. The result of the Lake-Gallego contest could determine the political balance in the U.S. Senate, so it has drawn national attention.
Rodd McLeod, a Democratic campaign consultant, said Gallego has the edge in the race based on his narrative and on policy.
“Imagine a child of immigrants who grew up in a single-parent family and worked his ass off to get into Harvard,” McLeod said. “You know, you graduate from Harvard you can go to Wall Street and earn $7 trillion. And this guy decided to go to Fallujah.’’
That, he said, is a powerful message.
“So the patriotism, I just think at the end of the day, even if you disagree with him on policy X, Y or Z, you’ve got to look at this guy and say he cares more about the country than he cares about himself,’’ McLeod said. “And that’s who I want making decisions for me in the U.S. Senate.’’
Lake is working to attack Gallego on immigration, linking him with President Joe Biden and the huge surge of migrants who have entered the country since he took office in 2021.
Mike Noble, an independent Phoenix-based political pollster, said Lake clearly has the chance to improve her image in a debate.
“She has an opportunity to really share with Arizona voters not only her vision but also how she compares and contrasts with Ruben Gallego, especially when it comes to Ruben’s previous voting record,’’ Noble said.
“One of the big differentiators between the two is that she doesn’t have a voting record,’’ Noble said. “He does.’’
That voting record reflects the liberal, heavily-Democratic district he represented in Congress and, for years before that, in the Arizona Legislature.
“And given his district and everything else, there’s a lot of things to attack on,’’ Noble continued. That, he said, gives Lake the chance to “compare and contrast on border, on housing affordability’’ — as long as she is “not stepping into the goo of election integrity if she’s smart,’’ a reference to the fact that Lake continues to insist that the 2020 presidential election was rigged as was her own 2022 loss in the race for governor.
“So her goal, the biggest thing is just vision,’’ he said.
On the other side, Noble said, that Gallego, with a polling and cash lead, needs to avoid debate mistakes or let Lake get his goat.
“Ruben’s got the high ground,’’ he said.
“I think for him, it’s not taking the bait and keeping his composure,” Noble said, when Lake goes after him on certain items “and he is able to respond to those and not stumble over himself.’’
The Clean Elections debate is set for Oct. 9 and will be broadcast on multiple television stations and streamed online across the state. The commission entered into a new partnership to produce, air and distribute their debates though the Arizona Media Association this year.
That came after it dumped its longtime partner, Arizona PBS, after a 2022 dustup involving the gubernatorial contest between Lake and now-Gov. Katie Hobbs. After Hobbs declined a debate and the commission offered Lake a 30-minute interview slot under its debate rules, PBS independently offered the same amount of time to Hobbs, provoking Lake’s ire even though it wasn’t Clean Elections that made that decision.
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