Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake could have won last year’s race if she won over more Republicans.
Lake lost the race by 17,117 votes, and a study of Maricopa County voters found 40,690 Republican-leaning voters voted for down-ballot Republican candidates but not her. That number included 33,749 who voted for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, while other Republican-leaning voters didn’t vote in the race or wrote another candidate in.
Every election is bound to have crossover voters, but the number of Republican-leaning voters who turned out for Hobbs was “astonishing,” said Benny White, an attorney and longtime Republican election observer and analyst who reviewed cast vote data, which was obtained through a public records request.
“It shows that that crossover voting effect in her race was a substantial part of the reason she lost the election,” White said. “The Democratic Party and the Democratic voters stayed with their candidates much better.”
Lake was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and repeated his false claim the 2020 election was stolen. Other Trump-endorsed candidates who denied the 2020 results had an even more pronounced crossover voting effect, White said, including former Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem who lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes. After winning their primaries, these Republican candidates didn’t transition to reaching out to general-election voters, he said.
“These candidates just never made this transition, they never made any outreach to the nonpartisans.” In the case of Lake, she took active measures to infuriate members of her own party, he said, citing her criticism of the late Sen. John McCain. “These were all people she needed to support her.”
Lake has not conceded her race, and has continued to tweet that it was stolen.
White, who’s since left the party and registered as an independent, said his 2022 election study, which was first reported by the Arizona Republic, came after a similar study following the 2020 election “to counter the Cyber Ninja farce that was going on,” a reference to the Florida-based company that conducted a partisan audit of the 2020 results in Maricopa County.
“They have no proof of anything,” he said of those who file “frivolous” lawsuits challenging election results. “Look at voter registration, look at who voted, it’s not rocket science.”
Arizona Republicans’ 2022 gubernatorial primary was a contest between the party’s right and establishment wings. Lake defeated developer Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence.
In a statement after the election, Robson said Republicans were “in the weakest position in Arizona we’ve been in as a party in 50 years,” noting Republican candidates lost a majority of statewide races for the first time since 1974, the first election after Richard Nixon’s resignation during the Watergate scandal.
Arizona’s next statewide race comes next year for U.S. Senate when Sen. Krysten Sinema is up for reelection. Sinema left the Democratic Party last year to become an independent, setting up a possible three-way race if she seeks another term. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego announced Monday he’s running for the seat.