Kari Lake: What Does Her Future Look Like? Few voters like sore losers and that is just what Arizona’s Kari Lake is.
Sure, she lost a close race for governor in 2022, and there were some technical difficulties with voting machines in Phoenix.
However, no court has found the irregularities were on purpose or that they consisted of some conspiracy to rob Lake of winning the election, as she has claimed.
Does this mean that Kari Lake’s career in politics is over?
Not necessarily. She still has cachet and support among MAGA Republicans who love the firebrand conservative’s ability to take the fight to the Democrats.
But many centrists and Independents, not to mention Democrats, find her shrill and bombastic.
She likes to play the victim card and this defiance is getting tiresome. Many voters do not believe “stolen election” tropes.
Kari Lake Needs to Escape the ‘Sore Loser’ Tag
She once was the future of the Republican party now she looks like an also-ran.
Kari Lake can still turn her reputation around. She doesn’t have to concede the election to Katie Hobbs which she lost by just over 17,000 votes, but she might choose to move on and hope voters forgive her constant claims of a stolen election.
Bad Temper On Display
Kari Lake has made some fiery comments relating to her lost race to Hobbs.
In December, this started to become unbearable. She shouted to the crowd at a Turning Point USA conference. “I know that right now we can identify as anything we want to identify, but I want you to know that I identify as a proud election-denying deplorable!”
She also wanted Maricopa County election workers to be “locked up” and then flashed an obscene gesture at the media during that speech.
In early March at the right-wing gathering CPAC, she claimed that someone offered her a cushy job that paid well, if she were to leave politics.
Liberal Media Has Already Written Her Obituary
If Kari Lake ever wants to run again, she must get over her loss.
Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast, no friend to Republicans, wrote that Lake’s act is unbearable. “Lake has become something akin to a one-hit wonder who keeps playing the same old tune for the same tired applause. The song was never that great to begin with and, in any case, it was a cover. All this to say Lake’s reboot of Trump’s 2020 flop isn’t just laughably bad, it’s also derivative and outdated.”
Lake has mostly played out her string in court. She took her stolen election case to the Arizona Supreme Court and lost most of her claims. She had previously petitioned the court of appeals to make her governor or declare new voting. That didn’t work. The supreme court dismissed all of her claims except one that will now revert to election workers in Maricopa County. This is not expected to change the result of the election.
How About a Book or a Podcast?
What does the future hold for Kari Lake?
She has extensive broadcast news experience, so she could start a podcast and write a book. She could be a Fox News or Newsmax contributor. Lake will likely continue to make the rounds on the conservative speaking circuit. But she wants higher office and yearns to be part of the conversation for perhaps a vice presidential pick.
Something magic to Lake’s ears is a race against U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema in 2024. Lake would be considered a front-runner for the Republican nomination, but she would run into problems with Independents who could eschew her for the more moderate Sinema. Lake is, after all, an extreme candidate.
If she runs again, she may want to build a better and more experienced campaign staff around her and focus on grassroots and retail politics instead of just holding large rallies. That was the recipe for Trump in 2016 but is now an outdated mode of electioneering, and Trump’s loss in 2020 proved this.
Another problem for Lake is that she has no experience running a large organization or legislating. She could become bored in the upper chamber if she won the senate seat. She could also turn into a cautionary tale like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who, along with John McCain, lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden in 2008. Palin failed to win again when she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022.
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One thing Kari Lake has now is time on her hands. She is relatively young at 53. She likely has at least one race left, but how will the public respond to that election denial act? If her speeches continue with that sentiment, she could go down a dark alley and not emerge. That is precisely what Democrats hope will happen to her.
Author Expertise and Experience
Serving as 19FortyFive’s Defense and National Security Editor, Dr. Brent M. Eastwood is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Foreign Policy/ International Relations.
