Kari Lake Meets with GOP Bigwigs to Discuss 2024 Plans
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake reportedly met with officials from the National Republican Senatorial Committee on Thursday while she was in Washington to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.
Politico reported that Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, told the outlet that the meeting lasted about an hour and the topics included a potential 2024 U.S. Senate bid.
The NRSC is chaired by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.
Asked if Lake was any closer to making a decision, Wren responded, “I don’t think so. I think it was more listening.”
Politico said Lake also met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
According to the news outlet, Lake “demurred” when asked how seriously she was weighing a Senate run.
The former Phoenix news anchor told Real America’s Voice host Steve Bannon that she had gone to D.C. at the invitation of GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona to attend the prayer breakfast.
On the hill 👀. @KariLake, House Majority Leader @SteveScalise and @RepGosar after the National Prayer Breakfast. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/rwt8vtJJxK
— Nick Moore (@GOPNickMoore) February 2, 2023
While in town, she said, “we decided then to kind of, to expand things out and visit with some real great patriots up on Capitol Hill.”
.@KariLake shares her experience attending the National Prayer Breakfast and touring Capitol Hill with @RepGosar this morning.
Watch the full conversation on the #WarRoom here: https://t.co/CHsdC3K6eM pic.twitter.com/v7TGdD3wzK
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) February 2, 2023
Last month, the Lake campaign responded to a CNN report that the candidate was considering a Senate bid, tweeting, “Kari is hyper-focused on winning her court case as she is the duly-elected Governor & her Election Case proves that.”
The election challenge of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ narrow (0.7 percent) victory in November is currently at the Arizona Court of Appeals, and Lake has pledged to take her case to the state Supreme Court if she loses at the appeals level.
In December, a trial court judge ruled in Hobbs’ favor, finding that Lake’s legal team did not provide “clear and convincing” evidence of intentional misconduct by Maricopa County officials to impact the result of the race.
Lake argues in her appeal that the judge used the wrong standard, saying, based on court precedent, the misconduct that invalidates an election can be much broader than intentional action taken in favor of a particular candidate.
Thousands of people came out for a Kari Lake “Save Arizona Rally” Sunday night in Scottsdale, filling the venue to well over capacity.
Lake spent a good portion of her 50-minute or so remarks discussing the chaos that happened on Election Day, when wrongly configured ballot printers led to hours-long lines at many polling locations in Maricopa County (the metro Phoenix area).
She showed a map at her rally illustrating that the voting machines malfunctioned primarily in Republican parts of the county.
Coincidence?? 👀
Look how perfectly Election Day Polling FAILURES on November 8th match up with the REPUBLICAN heat map.
Share this anywhere and everywhere you possibly can. SHARE! pic.twitter.com/1JCD7fvNDX
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) February 1, 2023
Lake’s lawsuit also alleges there is a lack of chain of custody documentation for 300,000 ballots.
She further said at Sunday’s rally that whistleblowers who had worked for the county during the election had come forward with information causing Lake’s legal team to conclude that at a minimum 140,000 ballots were counted with bad signatures.
No attempt to “cure” them by contacting the voter to verify his or her identity was made, according to her legal team.
Last month, the Lake campaign noted if she were to run for Senate, polling suggests she could win.
A January survey conducted by Blueprint Polling found Lake was leading by 4 points over Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and by 22 points over incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who switched from Democrat to independent in December.
The telephone survey of 618 voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percent.
“Kari Lake polls at 36 percent in a three-way Senate race with Gallego and Sinema,” a Blueprint Polling news release said. “The congressman follows closely at 32 percent while the incumbent polls less than 14 percent. One in six voters are undecided.”
In other words, Lake could be the beneficiary of the Democrats duking it out for the left and center-left vote in Arizona, giving the Republican a pathway right into the Senate.
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