Arizona Democrats Are Ready to Bury Kari Lake’s Non-Career

But many fear she won’t take the hint.

Photo by Rebecca NOBLE / AFP) (Photo by REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images

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PHOENIX, ARIZONA—“There are going to be people that are going to study our campaign going into the future,” Senate candidate Ruben Gallego told a backyard full of Arizonans.

Gallego has defied quite a lot of odds. He launched his campaign before Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced her retirement, angering the Democratic establishment for potentially disrupting the political advantages of incumbency. But Sinema foreclosed on a second term, switched her party affiliation to independent, and went on a campaign donor–funded world tour.

Since then, Gallego has carved out a lane not as the progressive warrior he was in the House of Representatives, but as the kind of small-i independent that Arizonans like to send to the Senate. Think of their past several elected senators: Mark Kelly, Krysten Sinema, Jeff Flake, and John McCain. None of them screams rabid partisanship.

Republicans have tried to brand Gallego as a flip-flopper, but they haven’t gotten it to take. Sure, he reversed previous votes to be tougher on crime, and he’s also moderated his stances on other issues. But whether you see that as opportunistic flip-flopping or as evidence of Gallego’s views becoming more mature in light of changing circumstances and experience largely depends on how cynical you are. Changing your policy positions over time to make them more pragmatic and less extreme can be read as a sign of a continuing education in American politics. In another era, that may even have been the consensus interpretation of an evolution like Gallego’s.

At the event in north Phoenix Sunday night, a man in an Arizona Cardinals sombrero grilled carne asada under a poster of Gallego that hung next to a rosary dangling from a hook on the wall, and a mariachi band had supporters dancing.  Their ears were probably ringing long after they left. Campaign leaflets featured lotería cards with nods to Gallego’s career, Arizona, and Kari Lake “La Mentirosa” or, “The Liar.”

Gallego’s backyard gathering was not the kind of event you’d typically see from a statewide candidate in a Republican-leaning state. Even though the setting was unusual, it had the formula of the sort of get-out-the-vote event that candidates use to drive turnout in deep purple states, right down to the order of operations: The party starts, the candidate shakes hands and poses for pictures, then spends a minute on the grill and finally delivers a stump speech to raucous applause.

I sat in the kitchen with Gallego after his speech, and as the mariachi band started up again, he told me why he thinks Arizonans are set to send a Democrat to the Senate for the third straight election.

One of the benefits of my background, you know, growing up working class, and also being in the Marine Corps enlisted world, I have a lot of friends that are Trump supporters, but not MAGA supporters. And what I learned from them is that they just value authenticity. They value, you know, showing that you’re willing to work across the aisle. That sounds weird, but it’s actually very true to them, and that they value patriotism, and so as long as they know that I’m—and they feel that I’m doing something that’s in the interest of this country, then they will support me.

Gallego acknowledged that “Arizona is still a moderate state. Actually, it’s still a center-right state, to be honest, from my experience.”

But against expectations and assumptions, Gallego has managed to build a large lead over Republican Kari Lake. The Grand Canyon State might incline to the right, but their voters seem ready to remind the country tomorrow that they’re mavericks about extreme partisanship.

Kari Lake is about to become a political pariah

Lake’s campaign has been a dud, and there are many reasons why. Ideologically, she is like a scale model of Donald Trump: Grievance and cynicism are her leitmotifs. She denies the results of fair elections, bends her positions based on whatever seems most politically expedient, and spends far too much time at Mar-a-Lago. With similar flaws but a smaller profile and a lower reserve of grassroots support, Lake’s struggles anticipate those of many on the far right who hew too close to the image of Trump.

Lake’s loss in the 2022 gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs was the first strike against her. Losing to Gallego will be the second, and unlike in baseball, politics usually only allows two strikes at the statewide level. (Just ask Beto.)

If Gallego handily beats Lake on Tuesday—as most polls indicate he will—it prompts the question of what she will do after her loss. Typically, candidates who lose two straight statewide contests either stay in the game with lower political ambitions,¹ or they leave politics altogether.² But Lake is not exactly a typical candidate.

Aaron Marquez, a Phoenix Union High School District board member running for a seat in the Arizona State House, told me a powerful Gallego victory should send a message to the small contingent of MAGA voters dedicated to pulling the GOP further right:

What we need on Tuesday night is decisive victories in both [the] presidential race and [the] U.S. Senate race, and for this MAGA movement and the followers and disciples like Kari Lake [to] see that it’s time to hang it up and allow a more moderate conservative party to return to our country.

But people around here don’t seem inclined to think that Lake will simply take the hint that Arizona voters don’t want her anymore if she loses again. Many of the Democratic voters at Gallego’s event and elsewhere don’t view Lake the way they do other politicians. They see in her an insatiable lust for power and, to a much greater extent, for relevancy.

“I think she’s in for the long haul until she can secure a board position at some kind of clinic. I think she just wants some type of power—that was a bad joke,” said Fernando Roman at the Gallego event. “She was an excellent news reporter. She should go back to that.”

“That party needs to move on from nonsense to actually getting things accomplished,” he added.

Roman’s view was a common one. At another event across the city, I spoke to David Self, who also feels Lake will refuse to move on even if she’s defeated on Tuesday.

“In the past, I would have said [she would move on], but in this current climate, I don’t really know what to expect anymore for those who legitimately lose races, even a second time,” said David Self. “So I would hope [she] does, but I’m not counting on it.”

As for what Gallego thinks Lake will do, he said, bluntly, “Honestly, I don’t care. I don’t think about her. My goal is to win and then to govern, you know, in accordance with what the people elected me to do, so she could do whatever she wants. And it’s not my problem or my decision to do that.”

1. John James lost Michigan’s Senate races in 2018 and 2020, then won a House seat in 2022, where now seems to be having fun.

2. Martha McSally lost a Senate race in 2018 to Sinema, then served alongside her opponent for almost two years after being appointed to replace resigning Sen. John Kyl in January 2019, and then lost that seat in the 2020 election to Mark Kelly. She now hosts self-help retreats and delivers motivational speeches.