“How Kari Lake Went From Local Anchor to New Face of the Maga Right” ⁠ ⁠ 

An anchor for Fox 10 Phoenix until last year, Lake has been a fixture in Arizona homes for more than a quarter of a century. Since then, she’s parlayed what may matter most in today’s Republican Party—the ability to captivate an audience—into a startling political ascent. Polls show her locked in a dead heat with Democrat Katie Hobbs in the race to lead a key battleground state. The prospect of a Lake victory electrifies the right and terrifies the left.⁠ ⁠ 

If elected, Lake, 53, would oversee Arizona’s next election—a source of profound anxiety for Democrats and some Republicans, who worry that Lake would subvert the will of the voters in 2024. Lake has said Joe Biden “lost the election and shouldn’t be in the White House,” and claimed that she wouldn’t have certified Biden’s Arizona victory in 2020. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is among those who have cast Lake as a threat to American democracy.⁠ ⁠ 

“That’s total bull—t,” Lake told me when I raised these concerns with her. “I will certify the 2024 election. You know why? Because we’re going to have election integrity bills that are passed that shore up our election laws, that remove loopholes from cheating. By the 2024 election, we’re going to have honest elections in Arizona, full stop.”⁠ ⁠ 

Such a declaration is unlikely to appease her detractors, who fear that her definition of “honest elections” will only be ones that Republicans win.”⁠