Kari Lake lost again. Will she finally go away now?

Kari Lake, once the fresh-faced MAGA firebrand set to shake up Arizona’s political scene, is now a veteran loser.

Monday night, with Lake trailing in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race by more than 72,000 votes, several news organizations called the race in favor of Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. After also losing the 2022 gubernatorial race to Gov. Katie Hobbs — which Lake never conceded, even as the courts shot down her multiple lawsuits trying to overturn the results — Lake has now suffered two straight statewide election losses.

It’s a more resounding loss than the one voters handed Lake two years ago, especially considering that former President Donald Trump won the state easily, with a current margin of more than 180,000 votes.

With Trump dominating and Lake earning back-to-back rejections, Phoenix New Times spoke with three Republican political consultants in Arizona to figure out where Lake went wrong, and why voters found her so distasteful.

Chad Willems, president of Summit Consulting Group and adviser to victorious Maricopa County Sheriff candidate Jerry Sheridan, said Lake was plagued by “residue left over from the 2022 race.” During that campaign, the former newscaster infamously told John McCain supporters to “get the hell out” of the room in which she was speaking — a defining, lasting mistake that alienated voters who probably agreed with her on most issues.

“I think she either got some bad advice there or just made an error on the campaign trail,” Willems said. “Ultimately, this whole business of running for office is about addition and not subtraction.”

Maybe it was Lake’s inability to strike a believable tone on abortion that did her in. After establishing her brand as an extreme anti-abortion crusader, she faltered as public opinion swayed. Her ever-changing views on abortion made her a laughingstock to centrists, unappealing to independents and treacherous to the right wing of the party.

Voters who didn’t punish Trump for his constant changes of tune sure didn’t let Lake forget hers.

“She couldn’t really change her position on abortion,” Willems said, “without it looking super obvious that she was just pandering and flip-flopping.”

But dragging Lake down the most, perhaps, was her struggle to come across as authentic. Lake is a compelling speaker with a voice like honey, but as a candidate she was disingenuous and unable or unwilling to take accountability for her failures. When she was polling significantly behind Trump, she declared the polls must be wrong. Lake’s cold and harsh veneer, while essential to her role as a MAGA provocateur, might also have prevented her from coming off as down-to-earth.

“She lacked the ‘I want to have a beer with candidate’ quality with enough voters to make a difference in the election,” said GOP consultant Marcus Dell’Artino.

That Lake faced Gallego, a savvy politician who is well liked in the state, also hurt her chances. Gallego also was not as vulnerable to attacks as Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and indeed earned more votes in Arizona than Harris did.

“Ruben is a voracious fundraiser was able to get out in front early and define himself before she could define him,” Dell’Artino said.

Barrett Marson, a Republican public relations consultant, also noted that Gallego was less vulnerable than Harris.

“For the most part, people didn’t like her as much,” Marson said. “While they saw Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris as an existential question — an economic existential question — they didn’t blame Ruben Gallego for the economy.”

What’s next?

So, after two stinging defeats, will Lake finally go away? That, more than why she lost, is the harder question to answer.

Since the Associated Press and others called the race Monday night, Lake and her surrogates have not addressed her apparent loss publicly. Lake’s campaign did not respond to New Times’ inquiries about whether she plans to concede or contest the results of the election, though the Kari Lake War Room account on X has at times boosted posts from users peddling conspiracy theories about the results.

Whether Lake plans to tie up the courts with another hopeless round of election lawsuits remains to be seen. But, Marson said, “It’ll be a lot harder for her to say this election was stolen due to Trump winning.”

Lake may not attempt to maintain the fiction that she’s really Arizona’s rightful senator — as well as its rightful governor — but she might not be done with running for office just yet. She could go the route of one of her allies, Abe Hamadeh, and pursue a smaller elected office in a deep-red district. That may not seem like Lake’s bag, but Marson said he “would never count anyone out.”

“Running for office is very difficult,” Marson said. “You have to have a very strong ego.”

Willems agreed. With enough time, he thinks, Lake might be able to overcome the sticky mistakes she’s made in her statewide campaigns. “She would need to go into the wilderness for a while — stay involved in the process, help some people get elected,” Willems said. “She’s a fantastic communicator, she’s telegenic, eloquent, sharp, quick on her feet.”

Dell’Artino said he had already heard rumors about Lake’s possible next move, and like her last two campaigns, it’s hardly a layup. “What I’m hearing is that she’s interested in running for state party chair,” Dell’Artino said. “Considering the reaction she got at the last convention, I don’t think that’s a shoo-in.”

That’s putting it mildly. When Lake appeared at the state party’s annual convention earlier this year, she was booed. That came on the heels of Lake leaking a March 2023 recording of Jeff DeWit, then the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, telling her that people “back east” were willing to make good money flow her way if she stayed out of the Senate race.

DeWit resigned, and Trump ally Gina Swoboda became chair. Notably, Swoboda has broken with Lake in a few notable ways, pushing back at the kind of election misinformation Lake has specialized in spreading.

Marson called Lake being booed a “watershed event” in the 2024 race. Dell’Artino thinks the fallout from the drama ended up costing Lake Republican votes.

“The damage that she took for the recording of that audio tape was far worse than people initially gave it credit for,” Dell’Artino said. “There was a sizable amount of Republicans that never came back from that. I think from their perspective, she broke their trust.”

But even if Lake has cemented her stature as a loser in Arizona, don’t count her out of the national political scene. It seems she’s been hedging her bets on it for the whole cycle.

Within the first month of launching her Senate bid, Lake was spotted campaigning everywhere but Arizona, spending much of her time haunting the halls of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Why Lake was stumping so much outside of Arizona, among extreme right-wing confreres instead of average Arizonans, became a common and defining question of her campaign.

“Kari was no longer campaigning like she did in 2022,” Willems said. “In 2022, she had a grassroots focus. She was showing up at district meetings and clubs, shaking hands and kissing babies and taking pictures.”

This cycle, Lake wasn’t around. She even canceled appearances with some grassroots organizations at the last minute, according to Willems, which he said “rubbed them the wrong way.”

Swamp creature?

On Election Day, Lake tweeted, “They hate me in DC because I can't be bought, I can't be blackmailed, and I can't be bribed.” That’s fairly misleading — Lake was endorsed by 25 GOP U.S. senators — but it’s true in one sense. There were plenty in the GOP who indeed weren’t digging her campaign.

In the month before the election, powerful, high-rolling committees run by associates of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans stopped spending money on Lake’s race, effectively leaving her for dead. In the days since the election, the Kari Lake War Room account has tweeted and retweeted multiple bitter messages about her lack of support from party leadership.

“Whoever the next Senate Majority Leader is, we hope he actually gives a damn about Arizona,” the account posted on Monday.

As he returns to the White House, Trump may not be a very big fan, either. While Lake may seem like a natural for a combative role such as White House press secretary, neither Dell’Artino nor Marson find that likely.

“I just don’t think she’s going to be on the list at the end of the day,” Dell’Artino said. “He likes her until she loses, and then it doesn’t go so well.”

Added Marson, “You can be a lot of things in Trumpworld, but you can’t be a loser.”

New Times asked the Trump transition team whether it was considering Kari Lake for a position in the administration. Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt replied that “those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

Dell’Artino and Marson both mentioned that Lake’s speaking skills might be a good fit for a media organization or in PAC-land. Turning Point USA, founded in Arizona by Charlie Kirk, seems as likely a home as any. It has a national audience, which Lake craves, and is comfortable addressing, Dell-Artino noted.

“Charlie Kirk sure likes to use her services,” he said, “so the most likely scenario in my mind is she ends up going on that payroll.”

Marson had a similar outlook.

“There are a ton of PACs out there that are controlled by the MAGA movement people,” he said. “But she could work at Turning Point. There are many places to fit her in.”

Lake may not stand for elected office again, but she’s about as likely to go away as be declared governor. The MAGA-sphere is just too accommodating to people so certain that they belong in the spotlight. In the end, what’s left for a grifter might just be the grift.