Trump-endorsed Kari Lake wins GOP nod for Arizona governor

Trump-endorsed former newscaster Kari Lake, a leading proponent of the former president’s election conspiracy theories in Arizona, has won the GOP nomination to be the state’s next governor.

Lake defeated a Republican field that included Karrin Taylor Robson, a real estate developer and former member of the state board of regents whose supporters included term-limited GOP Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Lake has made the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen a central piece of her campaign and her policy platform, and she has said that she would not have certified President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state in the last presidential election.

With Ducey limited to two terms as governor, both parties will be vying for the open seat in a toss-up general election, according to POLITICO’s 2022 Election Forecast. Republicans have held the governorship since 2009.

Lake now faces a matchup against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, one of a handful of Democratic elected officials in the purple state. Hobbs, who is responsible for election administration in Arizona, lambasted the Republican candidates for their stances on the 2020 presidential election.

Arizona was a hotbed for misinformation surrounding the last presidential election, after Biden turned the state blue by just over 10,000 votes. State Senate Republicans ran a massive investigation of the election results in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest jurisdiction, in 2021, earning harsh criticism from the county’s Republican elected officials and bipartisan election officials who called the probe shoddy.