SCOTTSDALE: She talks incessantly about a stolen election, blasts the “fake news” media at every chance and has parlayed her TV fame into a political career: Kari Lake is delighted to be called “Donald Trump in a dress.”
The Republican candidate for governor of Arizona holds the same fervor-filled rallies, reveling in the same bare-knuckle opponent-baiting, and delivering the same crowd-pleasing lines that propelled her idol to the White House.
And, some say, it might very well take her to Washington one day, too.
“We’re meeting here in this beautiful hall to make sure that we can take back our country,“ she told a packed evangelical church in Scottsdale last week.
The content of her interviews and speeches is red meat to the base: the Covid-19 vaccine is “an experimental shot” and Joe Biden is an “illegitimate fool.”
Had she been governor at the time of the 2020 election, she says she would not have certified the result in Arizona, and says “election security” will be a top priority if she wins.
Immigration, crime and an establishment that cannot be trusted are all mainstays of her grievance-filled speeches — as is the taunting of journalists.
“I don’t take my marching orders from the fake news,“ she says, to jeers from her adoring crowd, who hold signs saying “Arizona First.”
Never mind that until a few short years ago she made her living among those journalists, as a trusted anchor on local television news.
Or that she gave money to the campaigns of Barack Obama and John Kerry.
For the deep-red Republican audience, she’s the real deal.
“She walked away from a 30-year career so that she could serve the people of Arizona,“ says John Mendibles, executive director of a local league of veterans. “That says something.”
“She’s real,“ agrees Barbara Jo Glabman, 66, a retired radio journalist.
“I believe in everything that she wants… She’s against the schools teaching woke education. She’s wants a wall built.”
New face of MAGA
Lake was the youngest of nine children, raised in rural Iowa by her teacher father and nurse mother.
With her neatly coiffed hair, well-tailored clothes and a prominent Christian cross visible around her neck, the 53-year-old married mother-of-two is a more polished version of her mentor, say analysts, the evolution of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
“I would qualify Kari Lake as the new face of MAGA Republicanism,“ says Gina Woodall, who lectures in political science at Arizona State University.
“She absolutely makes Trumpism look mainstream.
“She makes it appear as if it’s not so extreme because of the way in which she says it.”
But not everyone buys it.
“This transformation of hers is political theater,“ says Richard Stevens, a Phoenix drag queen who performs under the name Barbra Seville.
“It’s a makeover. She’s now Kari Lake, Christian warrior.”
Stevens tangled with Lake publicly after she tweeted: “They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens.”
He posted pictures of Lake posing with a fellow drag queen, and said the former TV presenter had attended many drag shows in decades of friendship.
“She’s a hypocrite. And she’s a dangerous hypocrite,“ Stevens told AFP.
Others who knew the candidate in her previous incarnation also find the transformation tough to swallow.
“I don’t know if she really, really believes that Trump won the election,“ says Steve Krafft, who worked alongside Lake at Fox 10.
“Or if it’s just an avenue to become the governor. It’s a mystery to me.”
Krafft left the channel in 2019, but remembers Lake as a fan of Obama.
“She struck me as not a super left-wing person, but certainly a center-left individual,“ he told AFP.
‘Trump in a dress’
Lake, for her part, doesn’t seem to be too concerned with introspection about this apparent shift in perspective — at least not in public.
“A lot of people have changed their views,“ she told AFP when asked about her shifting opinions.
Almost as if by reflex, she turned straight to Trump.
“Ten million Obama voters voted for President Trump,“ she added.
It’s this felicity to the denier-in-chief that makes her such an obvious pick for his vice president if he runs again in 2024, media commentators say.
Politico, The New York Times and The Atlantic magazine all note the momentum she has for a spot on the ticket, a feeling they report is shared by Republican operatives in Arizona.
Lake has a growing edge over her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs, according to fivethirtyeight’s weighted poll of polls.
But even if she doesn’t win, the general consensus is that, like her idol, she is not going anywhere.
“You can call me Trump in a dress any day,“ she told supporters. – AFP
