More than six months after she lost the race for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake appears to have exhausted the last of her legal challenges to her loss.
But she’s vowing to go to the Supreme Court.
The Latest on Kari Lake: Headed to Supreme Court?
Kari Lake, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona in 2022, has spent the last several months filing various legal challenges to her loss and losing every single time.
Earlier this week, Lake appears to have lost the last of her challenges.
According to NBC News, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who has been the judge in several of Lake’s rulings, ruled that the candidate “had not provided evidence of misconduct in the county’s signature-verification procedures for early ballots.”
In March, the Arizona Supreme Court had thrown out most of Lake’s previous challenge, although the signature verification matter was sent back to a lower court.
“The evidence the Court received does not support Plaintiff’s remaining claim,” the judge wrote in a six-page ruling.
Lake has announced that she will “continue pushing our case to the United States Supreme Court.”
“The courts have just ruled that anything goes. We can play by those same rules,” Lake added in a speech Tuesday. “If anything goes then anything goes… If the Left plays that way, maybe we should start playing that way. We’re gonna inundate them with so many mail-in ballots their heads are gonna spin.”
Meanwhile, Maricopa County has announced that it is seeking sanctions against Lake and her legal team, 3TV/CBS5 reported.
Lake’s claim, the county said, included “several demonstrably false statements intended to confuse the Court and expand the remand proceedings… Yet again, Lake and her counsel presented uncertainty as certainty despite the plain text of her primary documents.”
According to Philip Bump of the Washington Post, Lake has now lost the same election six times.
“She lost the election in the mind of the public when it was called by the Associated Press on Nov. 14. She lost officially when the election was certified on Dec. 5,” he wrote. “She lost the election again on Dec. 24, when a judge threw out a legal challenge to the results. She lost again on Feb. 17 when her appeal was denied. And she lost again on Monday when a court rejected her argument that flaws in the process for counting absentee ballots warranted reconsideration of the contest.”
Bump also noted that Lake has more than doubled her Twitter followers since losing the election in November.
What Is She Planning?
Lake had promised a “big announcement” after losing the signatures suit, which some predicted would be that Lake was entering the U.S. Senate race in 2024. Instead, the announcement was the Supreme Court challenge.
ABC News this week previewed that Senate race, which could be the most unique in the country in 2024.
If Sen. Krysten Sinema, who recently left the Democratic Party to become an independent, runs again, she would likely face candidates of both parties. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) is running as a Democrat, and there will also be a Republican candidate, who could be Lake or a different GOP candidate. Operatives in the state told ABC they expect Sinema to run again.
“The election is shaping up to be an unpredictable three-way contest in one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds featuring an incumbent who left her party, a polarizing conservative who remains a rock star with her base and a Democratic nominee-in-waiting who would represent a jolt to the left for the historically moderate-minded state,” ABC News said.
“It’s gonna be like nothing we’ve ever seen before in Arizona,” state GOP strategist Lorna Romero told ABC News of the potential race. “I think what’s going to make it nasty is obviously Ruben and Kyrsten don’t get along personally. And depending on who the Republican is, if you get a firebrand like a Kari Lake again, we’ve seen how she’s operated before, that’s going to take it to another level.”
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.