TUCSON, Ariz. — Kari Lake tied her political identity to Donald Trump and presented herself to the state as his protégé.
For many conservative-leaning voters here, that doesn’t seem good enough.
Lake’s Senate candidacy is seriously lagging behind as she struggles even to unite the coalition backing Trump in Arizona. Both she and the former president are driving out independents and the kind of moderate, anti-MAGA Republicans who revered the late Sen. John McCain.
But Trump is in a tight battle here with Vice President Kamala Harris, because even as he alienates mid-level Republicans, he is also eroding Democrats’ support among other groups — including Latinos and young men.
Lake sees no such gains. An avid MAGA agitator who has yet to concede defeat in the 2022 gubernatorial race, she has struggled to make inroads with moderates, let alone Democratic-leaning constituencies. And she doesn’t believe the polls have her far behind her Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego.
“My internal polling looks good,” Lake said in an interview from her campaign bus, decorated on the outside with a huge photo of her and Trump and on the inside with a life-size cardboard cutout of Kari Lake.
“We are ahead of my opponent and I feel comfortable with our polls,” she insisted. “Our polls are a little different. We use opinion polls, but we also combine it with AI, which reads everything that happens on social media and on the internet.”
By most traditional measures, Lake’s campaign has been ineffective, and a state once ripe for a Republican Party takeover is now widely seen as one of the party’s least promising prospects. Her candidacy could become a cautionary tale for Republicans seeking to copy Trump’s deeply divisive policies.
And Lake’s inability to unite conservative voters has given Gallego room to build a coalition with anti-Trump Republicans, hardcore progressives and Latinos who may split their tickets for him and Trump.
In an interview, Gallego cited his military background and personal identity as assets in the race — especially, he said, for “Latino male voters, because they are very patriotic and they like having a Latino veteran running.”
“A lot of them don’t see Donald Trump as a politician,” Gallego said. “They see him as a successful businessman.”
The result: Trump is running neck-and-neck with Harris in the polls in Arizona, while Lake has been significantly behind Gallego for months.
Gallego is campaigning hard to exploit and strengthen that divide. On a recent flight across the state, he visited his campaign office in Guadalupe, a Native American and Hispanic community, where his supporters took photos with Gallego signs, modeled after the Mexican game of lotería. He touted his bipartisanship at a roundtable in Phoenix with moderate Republicans and discussed his devotion to his mother at a gathering of older Democratic stalwarts at a community center outside Tucson.
Lake, meanwhile, rallied her base.
In a 24-hour swing, she held a town hall in the back room of a gun club in Scottsdale and then rushed to Tucson for an early voting meeting where several dozen people gathered, impressed by Lake. She signed printed photos, as well as the shirts and hats they wore. Drivers honked their horns in support as they passed by.
Citing her campaign’s polling, Lake denies that there is any meaningful rift between her and the former president — and thus she doesn’t need to do any work to close it.
But Gallego has raised nearly triple what Lake raised in mid-October, surpassing her $57.4 million fundraising to $21.3 million. That allowed Democrats to dominate the airwaves for months, allowing Gallego to introduce and define himself to voters with far fewer counter-messages until recent weeks. Public polls reflect these gains, with few major polls showing Lake leading in the race.
A New York Times/Siena poll released Sunday showed Trump with a 48 percent lead, with Harris leading by 4 points. Gallego rose 5 points, 50 to 45 percent. Gallego not only won 95 percent of Harris voters, but also 10 percent of Trump voters.
That poll, like others, suggested that a significant portion of Trump’s voters in Arizona plan to split their tickets to support Gallego. He could also benefit from undervoting — people skipping the presidential race or voting for a third party, such as anti-Trump conservatives who feel they can’t support Harris — and from soft Republicans who thumb their noses at voting for Trump, but by and large they don’t. support the MAGA politics he and Lake represent.
Gallego has enthusiastically followed that cohort — a particularly notable tactic given his progressive roots. He was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus until he bowed out last year, citing contributions. He has called the border wall “stupid” and “stupid” and supported a “Medicare for all” system.
His support for moderates began before incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who switched from a Democrat to an independent, announced her retirement. Many told him they would stick with Sinema or vote Republican, he recalled. He kept a dialogue going, had “some very difficult conversations” and found himself making progress.
“A lot of times people would come back to us, especially after Kari Lake’s lack of effort and moderation,” he said.
Lake began her campaign with an olive branch to the McCain Republicans she had excoriated in her quest for governor. She said her efforts to forge relationships had gone well and that she did not believe Gallego was winning over the late senator’s followers: “McCain voters are smart and I don’t think they want a communist in the Senate.”
But while she was nice to some and had support from her main 2022 rival Karrin Taylor Robson and former Gov. Doug Ducey, there were plenty of others who didn’t buy it.
“When Kari Lake invited all the McCain people to leave the room, we did that in the last election. And I think we’re still there,” said Deb Gullett, a devoted former McCain aide. Gullett said Lake never contacted her.
Instead, Gullett is campaigning with Gallego. She recently joined him in Phoenix at the home of Robin Shaw, the co-chair of the state’s Republicans for Harris chapter, alongside Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and a dozen other Republicans and independents for a conversation about the importance of crossing party lines.
That kind of reach has allowed Gallego to increase his numbers and attract soft Republicans. But many of those Republicans don’t support Trump either. That alone doesn’t explain the rift between Lake and the former president.
Polls show that the gap is driven in large part by a specific group of ticket splitters: Latinos, especially Latino men.
Numerous studies show that Trump is making gains with younger Latinos. Gallego, the son of Colombian and Mexican immigrants, also aggressively courted these voters, using what he called “culturally astute ways to talk to Latinos,” including the few voters.
He organized barbecues in Latino neighborhoods and campaigned at rodeos. He brought a taco truck to a local boxing gym, hosted a viewing party for a match with a famous Mexican prizefighter and held a lowrider event at an auto body shop.
Gallego said that when voters tell him they are splitting their tickets for Trump and him, sometimes he tries to persuade them to consider Harris, but other times “we just have to focus on our campaign.”
Trump and Gallego share one thing: they are both men competing against women.
Lake left a distinguished career as a TV host in 2021, ran for governor and became a MAGA lightning rod. She has emulated Trump’s disdain for the media, brash style, key policy positions and penchant for falsely claiming election fraud.
But what works for Trump doesn’t always work for other Republicans.
It’s a dynamic not unique to Arizona. Trump consistently leads the polls of Republican Senate candidates across the country, even those who have fully embraced his brand of politics.
Yet Lake’s hole in Arizona is one of the most shocking examples, as she gained fame by molding herself in his image. Some of Lake’s most devoted supporters worry that the double standards imposed on women are hurting her.
Pima County GOP Chairman Dave Smith described Lake as “powerfully charismatic.” But he has heard from some that her communication style upsets them because she is “abrasive at times.”
“Yes, you know, Trump is extremely abrasive. You know, I’m abrasive,” he said, adding: “Women are judged differently and I know it’s not fair.”
But Lake strongly rejects any suggestion of sexism.
‘Nonsense. That’s just crazy talk,” Lake said. “I don’t speak that language. I don’t vote based on someone’s genitals. I don’t care about that. I care what you stand for.”
Lake said her recent internal modeling showed her only two points behind Trump. And, she said, she is expanding her coalition to include independents and Democrats who approach her “every day” to express support on the campaign trail. And she reached out to prominent members of the state’s Republican establishment, trying to connect more with business-minded Republicans.
But her financial rift with Gallego has undoubtedly crippled her.
Gallego had the airwaves to himself for months as he cast himself as a veteran willing to work with both sides. His ads relied heavily on Lake’s own words, using videotapes in which she compared abortion to genocide, vowed that abortions would not happen in Arizona and claimed she was the state’s “duly elected” governor.
“Maybe some things have bled over in the governor’s race,” said Tom Murphy, the mayor of Sahuarita, Arizona, who endorsed Lake and appeared at an early voting meeting to support her. “And you can always capture a sound bite that all of us might have – we wish we could say it differently.”
