Why did Kari Lake lose in Arizona even though Trump won?

In 2022, Kari Lake narrowly lost the race for Arizona governor to Katie Hobbs.

Many pundits predicted a bright future for the outspoken former television news broadcaster in the MAGA Republican Party. But this month, Lake came up short again, this time by a larger margin, in her Senate race against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). She ran eight points behind Donald Trump and six points behind GOP candidates for the House of Representatives in Arizona.

In explaining Lake’s defeat in an election that was favorable to Republicans throughout the country, political scientist Larry Sabato declared, “Kari Lake is a case unto herself ... The way she comes across, there’s just an arrogance that turns people off.” Columnist Phil Boas wrote in the Arizona Republic that Lake is “an unreformed fanatic."

They may be right. But it’s also possible that her defeats indicate — as did the unsuccessful 2022 candidacies of Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania — that voters do not respond to Trump wannabes nearly as enthusiastically as they do to the man himself.

Lake describes herself as “Trump in heels.” Echoing Trump during her 2022 campaign, Lake called the late Sen. John McCain “a loser.” At one of her rallies, she asked if any McCain Republicans were in the audience and then told them to “get the hell out.”

At another rally, she announced she was “going to repeat something that President Trump said a long time ago, and it got him into trouble: They are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, and they are rapists, and that’s who’s coming across our border. That’s a fact.”

Reprising Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media, Lake called the Arizona Republic, the largest newspaper in the state, “repugnant.” She dismissed a reporter who criticized her advocacy of using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 as “a worm.”

When Hobbs was declared the winner of the gubernatorial race, Lake maintained that the election was “the most dishonest” in the history of Arizona. She refused to concede and filed legal challenges, none of which have gotten any traction in the courts. She accused Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican who was the Maricopa County official in charge of voter registration and mail voting, of sabotaging vote tabulations.

After receiving “threats of violence, even death” against himself and his family, Richler sued Lake for defamation. Lake insisted she was the victim of “a political witch hunt and everyone knows it.” But as the trial date approached, Lake — probably to avoid embarrassing revelations in the legal discovery process — refused to defend herself in court and lost her right to contest the merits of the case. A default judgment was made against her and a jury will decide on damages next year.

More than a few Arizona voters who believe that Trump won the 2020 election and it was stolen from him do not think that Lake was robbed in 2022.

In 2024, the content and tone of Lake’s campaign remained unmistakably Trumpian. Lake falsely accused Gallego of voting to let millions of illegal immigrants “who poured into our country” cast ballots in the election. She claimed, without evidence, that Gallego and Vice President Kamala Harris planned to “decimate” Social Security by raising the age at which retirees can receive benefits. Although Gallego had voted for legislation funding the recruitment and retention of law enforcement officials, she insisted that he had actually cosponsored a bill to defund the police.

Citing the conviction of Gallego’s father for possession of and intent to distribute marijuana and cocaine, Lake alleged the congressman was “controlled by Colombian cartels.” Gallego’s parents, it turned out, divorced when he was in high school. Ashamed of the crimes committed by his father (who is actually Mexican), Ruben subsequently took his mother’s last name.

And to refute baseless Lake campaign claims that Gallego is a “deadbeat dad” who abandoned his family shortly before his wife gave birth, he released the text of his own divorce and coparenting agreement, characterized by the judge as “one of the most garden variety” filings he has ever seen.

Love him or hate him, Trump is a case unto himself. To date, no Trump wannabe — including Lake, the “Trump in heels” who struck out twice — has emerged as an electable successor. Trump, no doubt, likes it that way.

And many Americans, who voted against him out of fear and loathing, may take a sliver of solace in that apparent political reality as they suffer through the next four years — tempered, to be sure, by the 47th president’s recurring “joke” that he might find a way to stay in the White House for a third term.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.