Republican Kari Lake's campaign for Arizona governor is built on lies

Kari Lake, the front-runner in the Republican primary race for governor of Arizona, last week repeated the claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential elections that have been a hallmark of her campaign. 

In an interview with the conservative media outlet Newsmax, posted to her Twitter account, she claimed that the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft decision in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “really is a way to detract from Dinesh D’Souza’s movie ‘2000 Mules,'” which makes a case for bogus claims of election fraud.

Sitting for the interview in her room at Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where she was attending the opening of the movie, Lake said:

There’s no way that they can take what they’ve seen in this movie, and I’ve seen it now twice, and in any way try to tear it apart. The left is great, the media is great, the fakes news is great at lying, misleading people, but Dinesh D’Souza in this movie has laid out the mules that trafficked our ballots and funneled in hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots into our election in 2020. And they’re trying to detract from that because there’s no way that they can discount what is in this movie. … I believe they’re trying to create a situation in America where cities are burning, and people are talking about anything except the election of 2020, which was stolen.

Analysts have denounced the film as misleading, partisan and full of untruths. 

Lake has denied President Joe Biden’s electoral victory since early in her campaign. She told One America News in February, in a clip found on her campaign website, that the supposed stealing of the election is the “most important story, possibly, of our lifetime.” 

She is not alone among Republican candidates for elected office in Arizona in denying the election. The Brennan Center for Justice says that Steve Gaynor, running for governor, and state Reps. Shawnna Bolick and Mark Finchem, both running for secretary of state, have also called the 2020 election fraudulent.

A Republican review of the 2020 election in Arizona found no evidence of fraud and no significant difference in the vote count. In Maricopa County, encompassing much of the Phoenix area, it found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer for Trump than had originally been tallied.

By comparison, Arizona was one of the states won by Biden in which an attempt was made by Republicans to replace the winner’s delegation to the Electoral College with a slate of fake electors who would vote for Trump.

The notion of widespread fraud in the 2020 election has been debunked repeatedly. The Brennan Center notes that the nation’s top intelligence and law enforcement agencies all concluded that the elections were secure.  

If Lake and Finchem are elected, they will take charge of elections in Arizona, including in 2024.

Lake has been endorsed in her bid for the governorship by Trump and by right-wing activist and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.

She is running to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who was lambasted by Trump for his unwillingness to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.

The Arizona primaries will be held on August 2, 2022.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.