At least Kari Lake isn’t playing coy.
The front-runner for the Arizona gubernatorial nomination is a full-on election truther who is wielding her lurid conspiracy theories as a weapon in the primary.
She and the chairwoman of the Arizona GOP, Kelli Ward, want to immolate the state GOP on a pyre of insanity and ridiculous lies, and may well succeed.
Lake had a lengthy career as a news anchor before entering elected politics as a “stop the steal” stalwart. When she was still an anchor, she called Sidney Powell’s election lunacy “sobering.” She’s steadfastly maintained that the election was stolen and that the evidence for the theft will somehow, someday appear, if it hasn’t already. Sure, the famous Maricopa audit showed Biden getting more votes in the county, but that’s only because the ballots themselves were faked, etc., etc. Repeat as necessary.
She has called the 2020 election “the number-one issue” today, and maintains that it is “disqualifying” and “sickening” for her main opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, to decline to say during a debate that the election was stolen.
She has the endorsement of the four horsemen of the election apocalypse — Donald Trump, Paul Gosar, Mike Flynn, and Mike Lindell — and there is no doubt that she has earned it.
Of course, she’s already alleging fraud in her own primary.
It is often said that such a backwards-looking, conspiracy-fueled obsession with 2020 is bad general-election politics, and it is. But even if it were a way to win over independents, make inroads in the suburbs, and fashion a winning agenda, it’d still be a very bad thing for a state party to submerge itself in the fever swamp.
The Right in Arizona has always been prone to a rough-hewn populism. Think Jan Brewer or, even more so, Sheriff Joe. Donald Trump and the likes of Kari Lake have taken this tendency and wedded it to election trutherism in a particularly toxic and powerful brew.
Robson, the alternative to Lake, is a real-estate developer who has the endorsement of Mike Pence and Governor Doug Ducey. She is a conservative and — we never thought that this would be a central distinguishing characteristic in such a high-profile race — rational.
Arizona Republicans should avoid the abyss.