PHOENIX โ Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has an image problem with some Arizona voters that sheโll need to erase if she is to win Novemberโs election against her Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Thatโs 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 Lakeโs initial response to the Arizona Clean Elections Commission debate deal shows she hasnโt 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 โdeserve to see the difference between common sense and radicalism.โ
The next two lines in the tweet, though, show Lake just canโt avoid making the petty schoolyard barbs that sheโs embraced since entering the 2022 governorโs race and continued in her Senate campaign. Those antics have hurt her with those middle-of-the-road voters.
โIโll look Ruben in the eye & tell him exactly how I feel about his policies,โโ she wrote. โHowever, to make that happen, I canโt wear heels.โโ
That reference to Gallegoโs 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clear loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the 2022 governorโs race and her policy flip-flops on topics like Arizonaโs now repealed total abortion ban.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 Gallegoโs height and said she wanted more debates.
โIโll do 10 debates if he wants to,โโ Lake said. โI want people to know thereโs a huge difference here,โโ ticking off her โAmerica Firstโโ 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 sheโs consistently refused to moderate her tone, both in 2022 and this year.
For Lake to break out in a debate, sheโll 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 thatโs sheโs serious about enacting conservative policy in Washington.
โNot just talking about it, not just making appearances, not just stirring up people for attention,โโ Baker said.
Lakeโs problem is with some suburban Arizona voters who watched her 2022 campaign and are hesitant to vote for her this year because sheโs shown no sign of a real change.
โI think she has it in her to be a serious candidate and talk serious about policy,โโ Baker said. โBut suburban Republican voters have shown now for going on three elections that they want substance โ they donโt just want talk and flash,โโ he said. โAnd she needs to cross that bridge.โโ
A particular issue that could boost Lakeโs standing in a debate would be a focus on economic policy and conveying a real plan to address inflation, Baker said.
โI think if she does that and does it well for the next 2 1/2 months, she might have a chance,โโ 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 heโll 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.
Heโs increasingly focused on not only his personal narrative but on policy โ education, federal regulatory overreach, the fentanyl crisis and more, in an effort to show heโs an Arizona moderate palatable to voters. Heโs championed solutions for veteranโs issues, highlighting them in a primetime speech at Thursday nightโs Democratic National Convention.โโ
โHe 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,โ 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 whatโs 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.
โImagine a child of immigrants who grew up in a single-parent family and worked his ass off to get into Harvard,โ McLeod said. โYou know, you graduate from Harvard you can go to Wall Street and earn $7 trillion. And this guy decided to go to Fallujah.โโ
That, he said, is a powerful message.
โSo the patriotism, I just think at the end of the day, even if you disagree with him on policy X, Y or Z, youโve got to look at this guy and say he cares more about the country than he cares about himself,โโ McLeod said. โAnd thatโs who I want making decisions for me in the U.S. Senate.โโ
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.
โShe 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 Rubenโs previous voting record,โโ Noble said.
โOne of the big differentiators between the two is that she doesnโt have a voting record,โโ Noble said. โHe does.โโ
That voting record reflects the liberal, heavily-Democratic district he represented in Congress and, for years before that, in the Arizona Legislature.
โAnd given his district and everything else, thereโs a lot of things to attack on,โโ Noble continued. That, he said, gives Lake the chance to โcompare and contrast on border, on housing affordabilityโโ โ as long as she is โnot stepping into the goo of election integrity if sheโs smart,โโ 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.
โSo her goal, the biggest thing is just vision,โโ 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.
โRubenโs got the high ground,โโ he said.
โI think for him, itโs not taking the bait and keeping his composure,โ Noble said, when Lake goes after him on certain items โand he is able to respond to those and not stumble over himself.โโ
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 Lakeโs ire even though it wasnโt Clean Elections that made that decision.
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