Kari Lake’s Arizona Campaign Looks Like Nothing You’ve Seen Before

The Trump-aligned Republican’s non-traditional campaign represents a broader break from the old-line Republican Party.

 

Arizona Republican Kari Lake is running for governor as a hard-charging outsider. That’s why it came as a surprise when, ahead of the August primary, a supporter asked her about a rumor that she’d hired prominent GOP strategists closely aligned with the party establishment.

“I don’t know who these people are,” Lake pushed back, adding that she didn’t have “big, high-priced D.C. consultants” and that she preferred her team of true believers, many of them pro-Donald Trump 20-somethings who are new to politics. To drive the point home, Lake recalled, she waved over one of her young lieutenants and asked him to show off his “MAGA” tattoo — which happened to be on the inside of his lower lip.

The episode illustrates how Lake, a 53-year-old former local TV news anchor and first-time candidate running in a key swing state, has ripped out almost every page in the well-worn playbook on how to wage a campaign. And it highlights how aversion to old ways of doing business within the Republican Party is animating a new class of candidates after Trump’s presidency.

Lake is looking to extend the GOP’s 14-year hold on the Arizona governorship, but her campaign has little in common with the Republicans that ran before her.

Lake calls herself her own campaign manager, believes political consultants “don’t know what the hell they’re talking about” and refuses to call big donors who are accustomed to being courted. She ignores advice from the Arizona political class and says she’s not a “huge believer” in running TV ads, where campaigns typically spend most of their budget. Her “body man” works full-time as a realtor, her husband is her videographer and, until a few days ago, she had an old-school website that looked like it was designed during the early days of the Internet.

And while other candidates use polling data to shape their strategy, Lake hasn’t commissioned a single private survey since she won the primary— choosing instead, she says, to go with her instincts and interactions on the campaign trail.

While some seasoned Republican political hands wince, Lake is seeing positive returns — and has emerged as one of the most formidable Trump-aligned candidates of the midterms. After soundly defeating a better-funded primary opponent who had the backing of the sitting governor, Lake is in a neck-and-neck race with the incumbent Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs…..

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore