The Tragedy of Kari Lake

By Dan McLaughlin

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

 

There were elections Republicans lost this year that were always going to be uphill battles, such as trying to take out blue-state incumbents Kathy Hochul, Tim Walz, and Michelle Lujan Grisham. There were races in which Republicans trailed in the polls and had to hope that a big red wave would carry them over the line, such as the Senate races in New Hampshire and Washington. Neither of these things were true of the Arizona governor’s race, which should have been a layup in a midterm with an unpopular Democrat in the White House. Kari Lake ran for an open seat, aiming to replace two-term Republican governor Doug Ducey, one of the very best and most conservative governors in the country. Republicans have won the last three Arizona governor’s races by margins ranging from 11.8 points to Ducey’s 14.2 points in the Democrat wave year of 2018. Until now, Janet Napolitano, elected in 2002 and 2006, is the only Democrat elected Arizona governor since 1982. The Democrat nominee, secretary of state Katie Hobbs, was a colorless functionary so inarticulate that she refused to debate Lake.

 

In spite of back-to-back losses in the Senate (a streak extended to three in 2022) and Joe Biden winning the state by 0.3 percent in 2020, Arizona remains a red state in every meaningful sense. Republicans have controlled both houses of the state legislature for two decades, and appear to have retained control this year. Before 2022, Democrats hadn’t elected a state attorney general since 2006 or a state treasurer since the 1960s; the state treasurer’s race this year was a Republican blowout, the attorney general’s race still too close to call, but likely a very narrow Democratic pickup. Before 2018, Democrats hadn’t won a Senate race in the state since 1988. Before 2020, Bob Dole in 1996 was the only Republican to lose Arizona at the presidential level since 1948 — and 1948 was also the last time a Democrat won a majority of the popular presidential vote there. From 1968 through 1992, Democratic presidential candidates never cracked 40 percent in Arizona; from 2000 through 2016, they never cracked 45 percent. In the House, Republicans have held onto six of the state’s nine seats, winning the popular vote across those House races by a margin of 56.9 percent to 43.1 percent. Two Republican incumbents ran unopposed, but even if you arbitrarily assume that Democrats would have taken a third of the vote in each of those deep-red districts, Republicans would still have won the statewide vote for the House by 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent. Exit polls showed an electorate that was 33 percent Republican, 27 percent Democrat, 36 percent self-identified conservatives, and 22 percent self-identified liberals.

 

All of this is to say that there should have been no obstacle to Lake winning, if she was able to get enough traction to get her message out to voters. And she did. Many years as a local TV anchor gave her much higher name recognition than her opponent. She had enough money to get heard. She took the lead in the polls in mid September in the RealClearPolitics average and held it to the end, breaking 50 percent and leading at the end by 3.5 points. In the FiveThirtyEight average, Lake took the lead in mid October and held it to the end, leading by 2.4 points at the close of the campaign. By any standard, Arizonans saw and heard enough of Kari Lake to make a choice.

 

Along the way, she even wowed many skeptics. It was impossible not to get the occasional thrill watching Lake demolish hostile media interlocutors and connect with ordinary voters. As a campaigner, her talents are undeniable. The Atlantic dubbed her “the new face of the MAGA movement,” and talk began of her as a potential 2024 running mate.

 

Yet she blew it, losing by 0.8 points. According to the exit polls, Lake lost independent voters by seven points, and lost 9 percent of Republicans and 8 percent of conservatives, while Hobbs lost only 4 percent of Democrats and 2 percent of liberals. Lake did well among Hispanics, winning 47 percent of their vote, but carried white voters by only 50 to 49, a paltry margin for a Republican, due largely to a seven-point deficit among white women and a whopping 17-point deficit among white voters with college degrees. Among the 57 percent of Arizonans with an unfavorable view of Donald Trump, Lake lost 82 percent to 16 percent. Yet she also lost 12 percent of voters who disapproved of Biden. Forty-one percent said that Biden was not a factor in their vote, and Lake lost those voters by 38 points. Sixty-three percent said that Biden legitimately won the election; Lake lost those voters 76 percent to 22 percent. Seventy-three percent said they had faith in Arizona elections; Lake lost those voters by 25 points.

 

Lake would have won, in other words, if she had run about as well as a generic Republican in Arizona, and the decisive margin of her defeat came at the nexus of educated, conservative-leaning, and in some cases Republican white people, especially women, who disliked Trump, didn’t believe the 2020 election was stolen, and don’t think Arizona elections are rigged. And yet, Lake introduced herself to that electorate as a “stop the steal” candidate and never escaped its baggage. Mark Finchem, the “stop the steal” candidate for Arizona secretary of state, lost by nearly five points; so did Trump sycophant Blake Masters in the Senate race.

 

In retrospect, Lake’s defeat may well have been baked in the cake from the start by going all in on the “stop the steal” stuff. As we have now seen, that is poison in a general election in any competitive state in the union. But it got worse. Lake then went out of her way in the last week of the campaign to insult John McCain voters and tell them she didn’t want their votes. This was an act of staggering stupidity. You don’t have to like McCain’s politics to recognize that the man never once lost an election in Arizona. In 2000, he beat George W. Bush in the Arizona primary by 25. In 2008, he beat Barack Obama there by 8.5 points. He beat primary challenger J. D. Hayworth by 23 in 2010, and primary challenger Kelli Ward by 13 in 2016. He won his last general election six years ago with 53.7 percent of the vote, running five points ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona. The number of potential Republican voters over 30 in Arizona who have never cast a ballot for John McCain is practically nil. You couldn’t dream of constructing a majority of the general electorate out of people who never once voted for McCain. But Lake, who was a Democrat during McCain’s political career, just didn’t understand that, or got too high on her own supply to care.

 

In the end, the tragedy of Kari Lake is not that some missteps robbed us of a generational political talent, but that a person possessed of obvious political talent never had the sense or judgment to deserve public office in the first place.