Kari Lake has more court losses in Arizona: The Republican candidate for governor in Arizona last year, who lost, has continued to repeatedly lose in court, even as she continues to claim she really won last year’s election.
Kari Lake: The Biggest Loser?
Most candidates for office can only lose an election once. But Kari Lake, the 2022 Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, has lost again and again.
Unlike most 2022 Republican candidates, even ones completely on board with former President Trump’s “stop the steal” narrative, Lake has continued to insist on social media and in frequent conservative media appearances, that she actually won her race, even though she did not.
Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes, and Hobbs was sworn in as governor in January, but Hobbs’ various fraud claims have led to a seemingly endless series of court challenges, none of them successful.
According to the Associated Press, the Arizona Supreme Court has declined to hear most of Lake’s claims. However, it did revive one claim involving signature verification procedures on early ballots in Maricopa County, and sent it back to a lower court. There were seven claims in total, and the court rejected six of them.
“Arizona Supreme Court rejects most of Kari Lake’s election challenge,” was the headline from the Arizona Republic, although Lake on Twitter spun it as “HUGE: AZ Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Kari Lake, Forces Lower Court to Look at Signature Verification Issues.”
Lake’s claims, which included the idea that ballots were “injected” into the election, were rejected, with the court opinion stating calling them “insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law.”
“IT IS ORDERED denying review of issues one through five and seven. The Court of Appeals aptly resolved these issues, most of which were the subject of evidentiary proceedings in the trial court, and Petitioner’s challenges on these grounds are insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law,” the court said.
“Lake’s arguments highlight election day difficulties, but her request for relief fails because the evidence presented to the superior court ultimately supports the court’s conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results,” the court added.
Lake Won’t Stop
The Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini reported Thursday that Lake said at a church event earlier this week that it was time to “pray together for the Supreme Court & praise God with great expectations!” The column cited many occasions in which Lake has spoken of her quest to become governor in explicitly religious terms.
Her followers marched around the Maricopa County election center like the walls of Jericho, she has called various Democrats “demonic,” and some supporters have compared her speeches to prophecies.
Lake and her supporters have also pushed a wild conspiracy theory that Hobbs, the governor, and various politicians and judges in Arizona have been bought off by drug cartels. The claim, intertwined with the election fraud claims, appears to be the brainchild of an Arizona lawyer.
That lawyer has also alleged that his ex-wife and mother-in-law are involved with the drug cartel conspiracy, which supposedly entails the Sinaloa drug cartel bribing a large swath of the Arizona political establishment in connection with a housing deed scam. And courts have rejected that man’s claims in the past.
Democratic legislators did not participate in the late February hearing where the “evidence” was presented of the cartel conspiracy, calling it a waste of time. The main witness in that hearing was the lawyer’s romantic partner, per Grid.
“That hearing was an embarrassment and a waste of time,” Josselyn Berry, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, told the Arizona Mirror. “We would love to see them expend the same amount of energy to real issues rooted in reality, like our water crisis or affordable housing issue. The Governor is focused on delivering real results for Arizonans.”
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
