Arizona television personality Kari Lake's first foray into politics failed in a spectacular manner, in large part because she alienated a substantial segment of voters in her own party who either flipped to her opponent or chose to skip voting for anyone for governor.
That's according to a post-election analysis released last week that reviewed ballots in pivotal Maricopa County and was compiled for the Arizona Republican Party.
As the report notes, Lake, who lost to opponent Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes, was damaged by 33,000 Republican-leaning voters in Maricopa County who voted for the Democrat instead.
According to a report from Newsweek, "In comparison, Lake, a Donald Trump-endorsed 2020 election-denier, managed to gain only 5,953 votes from Democrat-leaning voters. Around 6,000 Republican-leaning voters also chose not to vote at all, or wrote in another candidate, rather than support Lake in November."
One of the authors of the report noted that Lake was dogged by her own rhetoric after she attacked members of her own party as RINO's (Republicans In Name Only) which alienated some of the very voters she needed.
As report author Benny White put it when interviewed by the Arizona Republic: "She just ran a terrible campaign."
According to the Newsweek report, Lake was not the only far-right candidate aligned with Donald Trump to see GOP voters flee.
"Elsewhere, the analysis of Arizona voting records also revealed that Mark Finchem, the Trump-endorsed far-right Arizona candidate for secretary of state, also failed to gain support of nearly 74,000 Republican-leaning voters in Maricopa County in November," the report states. "However, Finchem would still have lost his election to Adrian Fontes, even if he kept the support of these Republicans as the Democrat won by more than 120,000 votes overall."
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