Top Senate Republican to campaign with Kari Lake in Arizona
Kari Lake, the former TV host who ran for U.S. Senate in Arizona, will campaign in Phoenix on Thursday with a top Senate Republican, the latest sign of the party’s embrace of a candidate whose extreme views only make her turned it into a lightning rod two years earlier.
Ms. Lake and Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-largest member of the Republican leadership, are expected to condemn President Biden for his handling of the migrant crisis, an adviser to Ms. Lake’s campaign said, on the same day that both the president and Donald J Trump, his predecessor and likely 2024 opponent, are in Texas to visit the southern border.
Not long ago, Republican leaders in Washington shunned Ms. Lake, a bombastic ally of Mr. Trump who made repeating his false claims about fraud in the 2020 election a centerpiece of her 2022 campaign for governor, and then spent more than a year battling her own loss to her Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs, in court. She alienated establishment Republicans both in Arizona – with her attacks on former Senator John McCain, who died in 2018 – and in Washington.
But just as Trump has emerged from a post-presidency low to take a dominant position in the Republican presidential primaries, Ms. Lake is being embraced by some members of the Republican establishment as she makes a bid for the Senate. She has adopted a more conciliatory tone and has worked to get back into their good graces, courting the kind of Republicans who backed away from her in 2022.
Chuck Coughlin, the CEO of the political consulting firm HighGround in Phoenix, suggested that Mr. Barrasso’s presence could help boost Ms. Lake’s support. “He would be effective in speaking to an audience of Republicans and unaffiliated voters to convince them to take another look at Lake,” he said.
Ahead of Arizona’s Republican Senate primary on July 30, Ms. Lake has led her main challenger Mark Lamb, a sheriff, in the polls by wide margins, and she received a key endorsement this month from the National Republican Senate Committee, led by Sen. Steve Daines. of Montana. She has also won the support of Republican senators such as JD Vance of Ohio and Rand Paul of Kentucky as the party looks to take control of the House through elections this fall.
Democrats are playing a defensive role on the Senate map this cycle, with Arizona joining Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia as potential Republican candidates.
Republican leaders hope their support for Ms. Lake can strengthen her in what is expected to be a close race against her Democratic opponent in the general election, Representative Ruben Gallego, who is in Washington on Thursday while the House is in session. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and became an independent, has not yet said whether she will run again for the seat but faces an April 1 deadline to collect tens of thousands of signatures to qualify for the race .
In addition to the border-focused Phoenix event, the pair will also attend a luncheon devoted to a discussion of economic issues and inflation and make several stops at local restaurants and businesses to speak with voters. Mr. Barrasso will then headline a fundraiser for Ms. Lake’s campaign in Paradise Valley, a Phoenix suburb.
The party has made the border crisis a key issue in 2024, even as Republicans in Congress this month struck a bipartisan immigration deal that would have achieved many of their goals, such as making it harder to seek asylum and expanding detention capacity. After Mr. Trump spoke out against the deal, other Republicans — including Ms. Lake and Mr. Barrasso — followed suit, saying it was not tough enough.