Kari Lake has won her Republican primary for the Arizona Senate.
Lake, the glamorous former TV host who lost her bid for governor in 2022, defeated Sheriff Mark Lamb in the primary. In polls for the Arizona Senate race, she is narrowly behind Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego.
They are vying for the seat being vacated by Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema in a race that could determine who controls the upper chamber. Republicans have made Arizona a top target this cycle.
Former President Donald Trump was leading President Joe Biden by about six points in the RealClearPolitics average in Arizona before Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.
Trump hosted a call with Lake’s campaign on Monday, saying she is “fantastic” and “will not let us down.”
Kari Lake has claimed victory in her Republican primary for the Arizona Senate seat
Lake reacts to the cheering crowd as she arrives on stage before speaking after being declared the winner of the primary on Tuesday in Phoenix.
Lake, 55, had a meteoric rise in Trump world after the 2020 election, when she was one of the loudest proponents of his claims of voter fraud. She lost multiple legal challenges to the election results in her own campaign for governor in 2022 and has yet to concede defeat in that race.
Last month, he lost an appeals court challenge arguing that thousands of signatures on mail-in ballots in the Phoenix area were not properly verified.
Lake has since repudiated some of the far-right views he previously held, particularly on abortion.
She spoke out against the revival of a Civil War-era abortion ban in her state, which she had previously praised as a “great law.” The law, which has since been repealed, banned the procedure at all stages of pregnancy except to save the mother’s life.
Her campaign website says she “does not support a federal ban on abortion” and she has expressed support for a state law banning the procedure after 15 weeks.
Lake is a close ally of Donald Trump
Lake greets members of the press before casting her ballot at Paradise Valley City Hall during the Arizona state primary election.
It’s all an effort to tone down his image to appeal to some of Arizona’s many independents, who make up more than a third of the state’s electorate.
But at the same time, Lake has made efforts to excite his MAGA base.
“We need to send people to Washington, D.C., that the swamp doesn’t want there,” he told a crowd of Arizonans earlier this year, “and I can think of a couple of people they don’t want there. First on that list is Donald J. Trump; second is Lake Kari.”
‘They are going to attack us with legal warfare, they are going to attack us with everything. That’s why the next six months are going to be intense. And we have to buckle up… let’s see. What do we want to buckle up?’
Bikini-clad Kari Lake swaps Mar-a-Lago for the Bahamas for a family vacation
“We’ll put on our seatbelt, our helmet, our Kari Lake baseball cap, we’ll put on the armor of God, and maybe we’ll put a Glock on the side just in case.”
Lake was registered as a Democrat from 2008 to 2012, which she explained was a form of protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is married to Jeff Halperin and the couple has two young adult children, Ruby and Leo.