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Kari Lake, running like ‘Trump in heels’, still behind Ruben Gallego

Vaseline November 10, 2024

There has not yet been a winner in the race for the US Senate in Arizona, but even if she wins, Republican Kari Lake will still lag far behind newly-elected President Donald Trump, after portraying herself as “Trump on her heels”.

As of Thursday afternoon, Lake Democrat Ruben Gallego trailed by about 50,000 votes. Hundreds of thousands of ballots remain to be counted in Arizona.

At least for now, Lake stands a chance of having the least Republican Party support in the five presidential swing states that also had competitive Senate races.

The biggest question facing Republicans ahead of Lake’s Arizona Senate battle still hangs over the election as votes are counted. She is very popular with Republican Party primary voters, but has shown relatively little appeal to the broader electorate.

“The Trump brand is not automatically transferable to candidates who claimed the MAGA mantle. We saw that in 2022 with Senate candidates losing highly winnable races,” said Jessica Taylor, Senate editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“That was true in Arizona, and I think it was true in Arizona as well. Kari Lake came into this race with very high negatives after the 2022 gubernatorial race and after refusing to concede that race,” she said.

The Lake and Gallego campaigns offered no comment Thursday.

There were five presidential swing states this year that also had competitive Senate contests. Of those, only Nevada Republican Sam Brown competes with Lake because he draws a smaller share of Trump votes, although Nevada has a unique voting option.

As of Thursday afternoon, Brown was about 13,000 votes behind Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., with more than 90% of votes in that state having been counted.

Brown and Lake each had 91% of the vote totals Trump collected in their respective states, although Brown was fractionally lower.

In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Republican Senate candidates had 96% of Trump’s vote totals.

That wasn’t enough to prevent Senate losses for the Republican Party in Michigan and Wisconsin, but Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick defeated Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa.

Republican Senate candidates in non-swing states also trailed Trump, sometimes by significant margins. Royce White in Minnesota, for example, received only 85% of the votes that Trump received from his loss there. Bernie Moreno won the Senate race in Ohio, while receiving just 90% of Trump’s total.

Lake’s relatively weak position among Trump voters in a swing state is notable because her political identity revolves largely around her support for Trump. No Republican Senate challenger in swing states had a higher national profile than Lake.

Lake’s campaign bus, which crossed the state, is covered with large photos of her standing next to Trump. She won his support during her 2022 governorship loss and again on the day she launched her Senate campaign in October 2023.

According to Google search trends, Lake has generated more traffic in the past year than the other four Republican Senate contenders combined. Her following on the social media platform X is nine times larger than those of the other four candidates combined.

Lake was a prominent Trump surrogate on conservative cable news channels.

Still, barring a sudden drop in Trump’s support and her own voting fortunes at the same time, Lake has not inherited Trump’s popularity in Arizona.

She has trailed in nearly every poll since Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., withdrew from the race in March and was never able to keep pace with Gallego’s fundraising.

Unlike Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s allies, who poured tens of millions into the race to help Gallego, Lake received no support from allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Even without the help, Lake made ground in the polls in recent weeks but rarely led, even after a strong debate performance against Gallego in early October.

It’s worth noting that Brown’s lack of support from those who voted for Trump in Nevada comes with a caveat.

Nearly 3% of Nevada voters opted for third-party candidates in the Senate race, not much different than the 2% that Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana got in Arizona.

But Nevada has a unique option for voters that includes “none of these candidates.”

Now that almost all votes have been counted there, that choice has also received almost 3% of the votes in the Senate. Taylor said this option could ultimately tilt the race.

Lake’s relatively weak appeal to Trump voters in Arizona stands out compared to his two previous presidential runs.

In 2016, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won his final term on the same night Trump captured Arizona.

Because their feud was already clear, McCain received 9% more votes than Trump. McCain especially found more support than Trump in Maricopa and Pima counties, the state’s population centers.

In 2020, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who was appointed to the seat after McCain’s death in 2018 and her Senate loss months later, emerged as a Trump supporter. She received 99% of his votes, even though Trump and McSally both lost in the state.

Lake was clearly the most pro-Trump Senate candidate of the three and could fare the worst if he wins the votes of his supporters.

It was a scenario some Republicans feared long ago.

In March 2023, Jeff DeWit, then chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, met Lake at her home with a message.

DeWit told her that there are “very powerful people who want to keep you out of the fight for the Senate,” according to a recording of their conversation that was leaked to the British media ten months later.

“So the question I got out east today was, ‘Are there any companies or something that can put her on the payroll to keep her out?’” DeWit asked Lake.

She responded: “This is about beating Trump and I think that’s a bad thing for our country.”

At meetings before Lake entered the Senate race, the National Republican Senatorial Committee urged Lake to drop election denial as an issue in favor of more politically unifying issues, such as inflation and border security.

She largely avoided the subject at campaign events, but the topic often came up in questions from reporters who noted Lake continued to press in court to overturn her gubernatorial election.