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Here’s the bad news: Kari Lake may be eyeing another run at statewide office.
Here’s the good news: She may be doing it in Iowa.
On Wednesday, MS NOW reported that Lake recently purchased a $60,000 condo in eastern Iowa. Property records show a two-bedroom condominium in Davenport, Iowa, was sold to a family trust controlled by Lake, according to MS NOW. The condo, in a brick apartment building, is near where Lake graduated high school and an hour away from where she attended college at the University of Iowa.
After two failed election bids in Arizona — for governor and for the Senate — Lake is said to be considering reviving her political career in her home state. That could mean a run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has occupied it for 45 years. The 92-year-old Grassley is up for reelection in 2028 and has not said he’s retiring, but he would be 95 on Election Day if he ran again.
If the condo is indeed a sign that Lake is jumping ship to another state, she may soon become another state’s problem.
Though it doesn’t feel like it, Lake’s time as an Arizona election pest has been relatively short. She worked as a news anchor for Phoenix’s Fox 10 for decades before shifting gears in 2021 to run for governor against Democrat Katie Hobbs. Since then, her glossy interviews, election conspiracy theories and constant Twitter antagonizing have been an ever-present feature of Arizona politics.
Branding herself as “Trump in Heels,” Lake’s tight relationship with MAGA and President Donald Trump brought her lots of attention nationally, but she failed to connect with voters locally. She narrowly lost to Hobbs in 2022, after which Lake fiercely promoted bullshit theories that the election had been stolen from her. Despite losing court case after court case seeking to overturn that contest, Lake has never abandoned her election denialism.
That denialism became so severe that former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, sued her for defamation over Lake’s repeated accusations that he tilted the contest for Hobbs. In 2024, Lake settled that defamation suit with Richer after having accepted a default judgment against her.
In 2024, Lake took a shot at another statewide office, running against Democrat Sen. Ruben Gallego for the state’s open Senate seat. Despite appearing on the same ballot as Trump, who comfortably carried the state, Lake lost again, this time by a wider margin. Though she has promoted fewer conspiracy theories about her 2024 loss, she never formally conceded to Gallego and continues to attack him on social media.
Despite speculation that Lake is shifting her focus toward Iowa’s politics, it doesn’t look like Lake will let Arizona off her hook just yet. On social media, she’s still clinging to her Arizona conspiracy theories. Late Tuesday night, Lake took to X to write, “All the top Arizona governmental roles are fraudulently occupied. Arizona elections are theater. Everyone knows it.”
Lake did not respond to a request for comment from Phoenix New Times.
Arizona is already getting a break from Lake, sort of. At the start of his second administration, Trump announced that Lake would take a role as a special advisor to the U.S Agency for Global Media. Once there, Lake engineered an en masse firing of employees at Voice of America, a government-led radio broadcast network, resulting in a lawsuit that landed Lake back in her comfort place — court. She’s now technically a State Department official.
If Lake is turning to Iowa as her next political gambit, it won’t be unfamiliar. She held multiple political rallies in Iowa in 2023, at which she continued to promote her conspiracy theories of widespread election fraud.
Whether that crap plays any better in Iowa remains to be seen.
