Lake spoke Tuesday night at the GOP convention.
Arizona GOP senate candidate Kari Lake is up narrowly on Democratic opponent Representative Ruben Gallego in one of the most competitive Senate contests of this cycle, according to an internal Lake campaign poll obtained by National Review.
An internal poll taken by J.L. Partners earlier this month found Lake leading Gallego 44 percent to 43 percent among a sample of 513 likely Arizona voters, a gap within the survey’s 4.3 percent margin of error. Nine percent of respondents did not know who they are voting for and three percent selected the Green party candidate.
“This poll shows the trend in the Arizona Senate race: Kari Lake is leading Ruben Gallego. President Trump is demolishing Biden in Arizona, as the Biden campaign has written off Arizona,” the Lake campaign told NR in a statement.
“Recent public polling confirms this: New York Times and Emerson showed the race was trending toward Lake, and the NRSC polling and Remington polling showed her winning or tied. One thing is clear: Kari Lake will defeat Ruben Gallego in November.”
The poll measured respondents’s perceptions of Gallego and found 44 percent viewed him favorably, compared to 33 percent who viewed him unfavorably. A sizable chunk of the sample, 23 percent, either had no opinion or had never heard of Gallego.
After reading a statement describing Gallego’s progressive voting record on a range of issues, Lake received 46 percent of respondents’s vote share, compared to 41 percent for Gallego. During the campaign, Gallego has presented himself as a moderate, despite the fact that he votes with President Joe Biden 100 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.
“The more Arizonans learn about Ruben Gallego’s record of backing open border policies along with every other part of Joe Biden’s disastrous agenda, the farther they will move away from him. Arizonans deserve a real leader in the Senate, not a rubber stamp for the radical left,” said Tate Mitchell a spokesman for the GOP’s senate campaign arm.
Lake rose to national prominence when she ran for Arizona governor in 2022, as an acolyte of former president Donald Trump. She lost narrowly to Democratic rival Katie Hobbs, an election Lake repeatedly claimed was stolen, mirroring Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
This cycle, Lake has moderated her position on abortion and made herself presentable to GOP donors by emphasizing her personal story to bolster her fundraising, as NR previously reported.
Last night, Lake spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and spent much of her time attacking the media for its repeated failures over the course of Trump’s political career. She criticized Gallego for his party’s soft immigration stance, blaming Democrats for the proliferation of drugs across the state.
“Gallego and the Democrats have handed over control of my state, Arizona’s border, to the drug cartels,” Lake said. “Because of them, criminals and deadly drugs are pouring in, and our children are dying. Our children are getting their hands on these drugs and dying.”
At a recent fundraiser, Gallego suggested immigration was not his area of expertise, even though his state’s been flooded with illegal immigrants under the Biden administration.
“I probably won’t be on the committee of jurisdiction. That’s the Department of [inaudible]. I’ve largely focused on national security issues. That’s my background,” Gallego said at a recent fundraiser in response to a question about immigration, the Washington Examiner first reported.
“But I guess from my general point of view, since I do immigration stuff once in a while, it would be something that harkens back to some of the Gang of Eight legislation that focuses on border security, as well as, of course, having some level of very secure and flexible visas for work permits,” he added.
“Of course, taking care of the status of Dreamers. That’s probably what I would be looking at. Again, not my expertise, though.”
In the Lake campaign’s poll, Trump leads Joe Biden 46 percent to 40 percent if the 2024 presidential election were held today, a margin comparable to most Arizona presidential polls.
The Biden campaign recently circulated a memo to staff detailing the campaign’s emphasis on Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a reflection of its dwindling hopes in the sun belt. But, the Biden campaign insisted that Arizona and other swing states are not unwinnable following Biden’s disastrous debate performance.