Kari Lake Is Being Told She Will Likely Lose The Arizona Governor S Race

Comment PHOENIX — Kari Lake, staring at a potential loss in the Arizona governor’s race, is being advised by GOP officials and some of her closest aides to take a measured approach he should back down in the vote count and not “storm the castle,” as one person present at the debates described the sentiment. Lawyers, political operatives and others around the Republican nominee worked over the weekend from a “war room” inside a Scottsdale resort to prepare her for an upset loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, according to people familiar with the discussions. who spoke on condition of anonymity to share personal information. Lake has been among the nation’s most outspoken supporters of former President Donald Trump’s debunked claims that he was cheated out of winning the 2020 election. Voters rejected candidates who were denied the runoff in key battleground states nationally this year, and many of them the candidates responded by doing what Trump would not: concede defeat. With about 160,000 votes left to be counted, Lake trailed Hobbs on Monday by 26,000 votes. Recent polls haven’t been as favorable for the Republican as Lake would need to close the gap. It might be slippage from the range that would trigger a recount, which occurs when no more than 0.5 percent of the vote separates the candidates. Some campaign aides and Republican operatives, poring over internal data, have grown increasingly doubtful over the past three days that Lake has a path to victory. To remain viable, they said, she may need to claim as much as 65 percent of the next batch of votes in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and more than half of the state’s voters, and they also outperformed in Pima County, where Tucson is located. Trump urged supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol after his defeat, and the question of how Lake would react to the loss remains one of the biggest unanswered questions of the 2022 election. her statements. He has slammed Maricopa County for voting machine malfunctions and hinted at a fraudulent, partisan motive, while also urging patience as the votes are counted. Inside Lake’s war room, where the mood has shifted in the past week from giddy anticipation to grim resignation, talk has centered on how Lake should talk about loss. Among those who have appeared are some of the biggest names in Trump’s orbit, including Stephen K. Bannon and Christina Bobb, a former One America News anchor who helped review 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County after the 2020 election .Trump himself called on Sunday. Discussions ranged from how Lake could acknowledge the loss to whether she should adopt Trump’s playbook and claim she was robbed of the election. Some want her message to focus on problems with printers on Election Day that affected 30 percent of polling places. “No one is advocating an attack on the castle,” said one person familiar with the discussions, while several people said the talks were fluid and that anger over the process on Election Day was evident. People around Lake told her it wouldn’t be in her best interest to claim the election was stolen. They have also warned of potential damage to Arizona, and the country at large, if the state became home to a resurgent “Stop the Steal” movement. Others have warned against disrupting the current count and have decided there is little the campaign can do to change the outcome. At the same time, Lake relies heavily on her own instincts, according to current and former aides, and may go in a different direction than her team suggests. and they in the war room. GOP activists, including some who contacted Lake during her campaign, are threatening legal action and seeking to gather testimony from voters who claim they were turned away at the polls. Hobbs started the count with a significant lead. Councilors of the lake hoped that later lots of votes — drawn from election day ballots they thought it would be favorable to Lake—they would catch her. But the results don’t break as much in her favor as expected. Lake criticized the state’s early voting system throughout her campaign and urged people to vote in person on Election Day or leave their early ballots at the polls. Additional results from Maricopa County were expected to be released late Monday. People in the GOP war room expect those results to reduce Hobbs’ lead, but probably not enough to change the trajectory of the contest. The subdued mood in the war room, where those gathered in recent days drank coffee and ate pizza and sandwiches, marks a turnaround from days past. The day after the vote was completed, Lake was in meetings about a possible move to the governor’s office — reviewing resumes and talking to business leaders and GOP hands about spots on her team. Now, the mood inside a large conference room filled with televisions and strewn coffee cups has turned from excitement to a mixture of anger and resignation that Hobbs may be on her way to tipping the governor’s blue collar. after more than a decade of Republican control. Lake, members of her campaign and allies have gathered at the hotel several times in recent days, culminating in a phone call with the former president on Sunday in a side room near the convention site. Trump, who has made Arizona the centerpiece of his false claims of voter fraud in 2020, expressed disbelief that the Republican nominee lost, according to three people with knowledge of the call. But Lake has been mostly silent in recent days, even as Hobbs released a statement Sunday from her campaign manager saying the Democrat was the “clear favorite to be Arizona’s next governor.” Lake’s team did not respond to a request for comment on that allegation, and the Republican candidate — usually busy on social media — didn’t tweet for more than 24 hours, breaking her silence midday Monday with a disconnected communication. “Arizona, I’m fighting for you,” she tweeted. An adviser said Lake will likely appear on a Fox News show Monday night. “Everybody expects us to scream, and we do the opposite,” the adviser said. In addition to Lake’s closest advisers and some lawyers, other allies have filtered in and out of the war room, according to people with knowledge of the activity there. They include Rick Grenell, who served as Trump’s deputy director of national intelligence, and Bob, who serves as a lawyer for Trump’s political action committee and has been interviewed by the FBI about her involvement in the case that arose out of the handling of sensitive documents allegedly obtained from Trump. at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and club. Additional attendees included Bannon, former White House chief strategist and far-right radio talk show host, and Tyler Bauer, chief operating officer of the political arm of pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA. Bowyer has directed efforts through his Turning Point PAC to help Lake and a slate of GOP candidates who appear on track to win seats in the state legislature. After problems were discovered at the polls Tuesday, Bowyer threatened to launch recall campaigns against Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, which oversees election day operations and vote counting, and Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder responsible for early voting. “Go talk to your neighbor about how incompetent Lil’ Bill is and help impeach the people responsible for this international embarrassment,” Bowyer tweeted Saturday. In a statement to the Washington Post, Gates said he was focused on completing the 2022 election and governing Maricopa County. Richer, through an assistant, declined to comment. Gates, Richer and other county leaders have repeatedly said problems at polling places on Election Day did not prevent voters from casting ballots or cause ballots to be misread. Voters were instructed to wait until the problems were resolved, travel to different polling stations or place their ballots in secure ballot boxes that were taken downtown and counted there. But those familiar with the talks inside the war room said the Election Day problems could be the subject of a lawsuit. Track which election naysayers are winning and losing in the midterms Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for secretary of state who on Friday was expected to lose, has also stopped at the Scottsdale resort where Republicans are gathering. He refused to admit it, tweeting conspiracy theories about George Soros, the Jewish financier and Democratic donor, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency investor and Democratic donor whose business empire has collapsed in recent days. Finchem sent out a fundraising appeal to supporters on Monday saying: “This fight is not over. This fight is not over. I need your help today to fight back against the Fake News Machine that spews Leftist Propaganda hoping we don’t notice!” Grenell, Bobb and Finchem did not immediately respond to requests for comment. People familiar with the discussions said Bannon and Caroline Wren, Lake’s senior adviser and a veteran Democratic fundraiser, were clear about the unfavorable numbers. But in a monologue Monday morning on his “War Room” radio show, Bannon railed against Maricopa County, describing the election day malfunctions as “an active discrediting of Arizona voters on the world stage.” Later Monday, he said, “We have to stop the certification.” As a result, Republicans had asked a judge to extend voting hours on Election Day of the problems, but the judge rejected their request, finding that they could not prove that any voter had been denied the opportunity to vote. Lake and her allies…

title: “Kari Lake Is Being Told She Will Likely Lose The Arizona Governor S Race " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-06” author: “Gilbert Ferraro”