PHOENIX — Republican Kari Lake is headed into a general election battle against Democrat Ruben Gallego in her quest for a U.S. Senate seat, but the former television anchor who reinvented herself in the mold of Donald Trump has a heavy lift ahead.
The losing candidate in the 2022 race for Arizona governor came out 16 percentage points ahead of her main challenger in Tuesday’s election to claim a relatively easy primary victory.
She now needs to pivot to the general election and broaden her base of support to bring in moderate Republicans and independents who will actually decide a general election.
But the win against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb and a relatively unknown third GOP candidate, Elizabeth Jean Reyes, was nowhere near as clear-cut as she needed to give her a solid edge over Gallego and draw in donors she’ll need in the run-up to Nov. 5, some political observers say.
While Lake’s campaign called the victory where she tallied 55% of the vote versus Lamb’s 39% as “decisive,’’ two well-known political operatives say that’s not the case.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,’’ said Barrett Marson, a longtime Republican political consultant.
“All she did was grow her base what, 4 or 5% from the primary in 2022,’’ he said. “This does not portend well for a general election where she needs to consolidate the Republicans to support her.’’
Lake needed to have much stronger support among Republican primary voters to be seen as having a decent chance to beat Gallego in November, consultant Chuck Coughlin said. Instead, the results showed “a deep division’’ among Republican voters who are turned off by her, Coughlin said
“You have 40% of Republican voters bailing on you,’’ he said.
“That’s not a good sign going into a very competitive general election in 100 days,” said Coughlin, who was a key advisor to former Gov. Jan Brewer, has ran a host of Arizona political campaigns and worked for the late Sen. John McCain in the 1980s.
Another Republican political consultant and analyst, Stan Barnes, said Lake’s campaign is far from dead and that she has decent path to victory.
He points to Democrats’ failure to control a surge of border crossings under President Joe Biden and the new Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, as a key issue weighing in Lake’s favor that will be politically damaging to Gallego. Barnes, a former state lawmaker, said both hard-right and moderate Republicans and independents in the party’s McCain wing can be swayed toward former President Donald Trump and his acolyte, Lake, by that issue.
But as with most statewide races in Arizona, if Lake is to defeat Gallego she must appeal to voters away from her base of primary voters.
That’s the independents and moderate business Republicans who she turned off in 2022. And those politically unaffiliated voters are crucial in a state like Arizona where they make up 34% of the more than 4.1 million registered voters.
And unlike Gallego, who has worked for months to grow support away from the liberal south Phoenix district he’s represented in Congress for nearly 10 years, she hasn’t consistently made the effort to broaden her support.
In both the 2022 race against now-Gov. Katie Hobbs and in the current race, Lake ignored efforts to get her to moderate her message to appeal to swing voters she’ll need if she is to win, Coughlin said.
Instead, she’s leaned in to her Trump-esque messaging, creating a narrative that will be hard for her to break free from, Marson and Coughlin said. That may not play well in the general.
Barnes agrees that Lake will need to moderate her campaign style, if not her policy positions, to win those voters.
“If you distill it down to what does Kari Lake need in order to win, it’s to be more like (Ronald) Reagan and less like Trump,’’ Barnes said.
“That is what she needs — in style,’’ he continued. “And that’s the important thing. She doesn’t need to change an issue position, she can be true to herself, but it’s about the sell.’’
There’s only so much market for the “good versus evil,’’ message Lake has been selling for the past two years, Barnes said.
For Coughlin, pivoting to the general election means Lake must do what she’s failed to do so far in her short political career: tone down the nasty rhetoric and work to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters.
“And she’s just not listening to that,’’ he said.
“She has her own vision of what she wants to broadcast to people and she’s just not giving enough profile in order to attract more voters to her cause,’’ Couglin explained. “The question that needs to be posed to her, is ‘What are you doing to portray yourself as enough of a coalition builder in Arizona to get unaffiliated voters and disaffected Republicans to vote for you? Instead of just focusing on Ruben, what about you?’ ‘’
Marson and Coughlin said it’s unlikely Lake will be able to raise the money to set that narrative against Gallego at this point, since she’s falling well short in fundraising.
As of early July, Lake had raised only about a third of the $32 million Gallego brought in this election cycle. And she spent more than $8 million of that in the primary, leaving her with $2 million in cash on hand.
Gallego, meanwhile, had no primary opponent and was able to spend his fundraising haul broadening his base and reaching out to voters in both rural and urban areas of the state. He’s been highlighting his status as a U.S. Marine combat veteran who supports stronger efforts to secure the border, law enforcement and veterans.
Gallego had over $8 million in his campaign accounts, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission reports filed on July 18.
While money isn’t everything in a political race, it does show whether a major candidate has convinced donors — both in Arizona and across the nation — that their money is going to a potentially winning cause. Gallego has proven himself to be a prolific fundraiser, while Lake isn’t drawing in the donors she needs.
Both campaigns sent “state of the race’’ memos to reporters following Tuesday’s primary where they outlined their strategies and path to victory.
Lake’s campaign advisors said in the memo that she is well positioned to beat Gallego and outlined the basics of their strategy.
“Ruben Gallego is a weak candidate and Far-Left progressive,’’ the memo says. “We will define him and Lake will defeat him in November.’’
The biggest problem for Gallego is his connection to Biden and Harris and his record of supporting their policies, Barnes said. Lake and, potentially, national Republicans are likely to flood the airwaves with ads trying to connect him with national Democratic policies, and that will could resonate with voters.
And Lake has one more advantage, Barnes said.
“Kari Lake is the most charismatic, room-owning politician in Arizona in my lifetime,’’ he said.
“And she started out with 20 years of name ID in Phoenix television,’’ Barnes said. “She has tremendous magnetism and personal gravity.’’
But she loses some of that advantage by constantly picking fights with reporters covering her campaign, Barnes said.
“And she shouldn’t do that,’’ he said.
In their own “state of the race’’ memo, Gallego campaign manager Nichole Johnson said his campaign was in “a strong position to defeat Lake.’’
Johnson highlighted Gallego’s efforts to broaden his support by traveling across the state, touting his push to help fellow veterans, lower prescription drug costs, moderate inflation and “bring people together to solve Arizona’s most pressing problems.’’
“Ruben has built a broad coalition of support that includes border mayors, law enforcement, rural elected officials, the business community and more,’’ Johnson’s wrote.
That effort will be hard for Lake to overcome in the current environment and with this week’s relatively weak election results, Marson said.
“The biggest question right now after these results is: does Kari Lake’s campaign get the money to prosecute the case that Ruben Gallego is too liberal for Arizona,’’ Marson said. “And right now, I’d really be concerned that the money will not flow to Arizona.’’
And although Gallego has a record more liberal than that of the average voter, “Kari Lake is so toxic that there may be more votes that are anti-Kari Lake than are pro-Ruben Gallego,’’ Marson said.
Still, there’s time for Lake to pivot and make inroads. Polling averages touted by Lake’s campaign show her trailing by just 3 percentage points, well within the margin of error.
And after her primary win, she picked up an endorsement from Karrin Taylor Robson, the business-backed Republican she defeated in the 2022 GOP governor race primary. The move marks a shift by Robson and an early sign that Lake is moving to bring the party together following the primary.
“In the endorsement that Karen provided here, there should be an opening, again if humbly pursued, to expand your ability to raise money with more of a national fundraising base,’’ Coughlin said.
Much will depend on how the campaigns develop in the coming three months, and how the Trump and Harris campaigns work with their party’s Senate candidates.
“My gut is that Harris and Ruben have much higher ceilings to recruit a broader cross-section of the electorate than the Trump and Lake campaign,’’ Coughlin said. “But the Trump and Lake campaign are going to be there to pounce on any mistake or anything their opponents do, to try to define them as unacceptable to large swaths of the electorate.’’
Still, Lake has yet to pivot from that message that Barnes said she needs to abandon. It came up again in her Tuesday night speech after she won the primary.
“This is not a battle between Democrats and Republicans, this is a battle between good and evil,’’ Lake said. “This is a between the people who want to destroy this country and the people who want to save America.’’
Gallego took immediate advantage of that when he was asked about the comment on Wednesday.
“I don’t think she’s evil,’’ he said. “And it’s sad that she’s putting politics in that light.’’
