TUCSON, Arizona — Kari Lake tied her political identity to Donald Trump, presenting herself to the state as his protégé.
For many conservative-leaning voters here, that doesn’t seem to be good enough.
Lake’s Senate candidacy is lagging badly as she struggles even to unite the coalition backing Trump in Arizona. Both she and the former president are driving away independents and the kind of moderate, anti-MAGA Republicans who revered the late Sen. John McCain.
But Trump is locked in a tight contest with Vice President Kamala Harris here, because even as he alienates middle-of-the-road Republicans, he is also eroding Democrats’ support with other groups — including Latinos and young men.
Lake is seeing no such gains. A fervent MAGA rabble-rouser who has still not conceded her defeat in the 2022 gubernatorial race, she has struggled to make inroads with moderates, let alone Democratic-leaning constituencies. And she does not believe a raft of polling that shows her far behind her Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego.
“My internal polling looks good,” Lake said in an interview from her campaign bus adorned on the outside with a massive photo of her and Trump and on the inside with a life-size cardboard Kari Lake cutout.
“We’re ahead of my opponent, and I feel comfortable with our polling,” she insisted. “Our polling is a little different. We take polling, but we also combine it with AI, which reads all of what’s happening on social media and across the Internet.”
By most traditional measures, Lake’s campaign has not been effective and a state that was once ripe for a GOP takeover is now widely viewed as one of the party’s least promising pickup opportunities. Her candidacy could become a cautionary tale for Republicans who seek to replicate Trump’s ultra-divisive brand of politics.
And Lake’s inability to unite conservative voters has given Gallego room to build a coalition that includes anti-Trump Republicans, hard-core progressives and Latinos who may be splitting their tickets for him and Trump.
In an interview, Gallego cited his military background and personal identity as assets in the race — especially, he said, for “Latino male voters, because they’re very patriotic and they like the fact that there’s a Latino veteran running.”
“A lot of them don’t see Donald Trump as a politician,” Gallego said. “They see him as a successful businessman.”
The result: Trump is running neck-and-neck with Harris in Arizona polling, while Lake has spent months significantly behind Gallego.
Gallego is campaigning hard to exploit and reinforce that gap. In a recent blitz through the state, he visited his campaign office in Guadalupe, a Native American and Hispanic community, where his supporters took pictures with Gallego signs modeled after the Mexican game of lotería. He touted his bipartisanship at a roundtable discussion in Phoenix with moderate Republicans and discussed his devotion to his mother at a gathering of older Democratic stalwarts at a community center outside of Tucson.
Lake, meanwhile, was rallying her base.
In a 24-hour swing, she held a town hall in the back room of a gun club in Scottsdale and then zipped down to Tucson for an early-voting rally where a few dozen people gathered, starstruck by Lake. She signed printed-out photos, as well as the shirts and hats that they were wearing. Drivers slammed on their car horns in a show of support as they drove by.
Citing her campaign’s survey research, Lake denies that there is any meaningful gap between her and the former president — and thus no work that she needs to do to close it.
But Gallego has raised nearly triple what Lake has collected by mid-October, beating her fundraising $57.4 million to $21.3 million. That’s allowed Democrats to dominate the airwaves for months, letting Gallego introduce and define himself to voters with far less counter-messaging until recent weeks. Public surveys reflect those advantages with few major polls showing Lake leading in the race.
A New York Times/Siena poll released Sunday showed Trump at 48 percent, leading Harris by 4 points. Gallego was up by 5 points, 50 to 45 percent. It found Gallego winning not only 95 percent of Harris voters but also 10 percent of Trump voters.
That poll, like others, suggested an important slice of Trump’s voters in Arizona plan to split their tickets to support Gallego. He may also benefit from undervoting — people who skip the presidential race or vote third party, such as anti-Trump conservatives who feel they can’t support Harris — and from soft Republicans who hold their nose to vote for Trump but don’t broadly support the MAGA politics that he and Lake represent.
Gallego has enthusiastically pursued that cohort — a particularly notable tactic because of his progressive roots. He was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus until bowing outlast year, citing dues. He has called the border wall “stupid” and “dumb” and supported a “Medicare for all” system.
His outreach to moderates began before incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who switched from Democrat to an independent, announced her retirement. Many told him they would stay with Sinema or vote Republican, he recalled. He kept a dialogue going, had “some very tough conversations” and found he made progress.
“A lot of times, people came back to us, especially after Kari Lake didn’t make an effort, didn’t moderate,” he said.
Lake began her campaign with an olive branch to the McCain Republicans she had excoriated in her run for governor. She said her attempts to forge relationships went well and that she did not believe Gallego was winning over the late senator’s followers: “McCain voters are smart and I don’t think they want a communist for Senate.”
But while she made nice with some, nabbing endorsements from her 2022 primary rival Karrin Taylor Robson and former Gov. Doug Ducey, there were plenty of others who didn’t buy it.
“When Kari Lake invited all of the McCain people to get the hell out of the room, we did, last election. And I think that we’re still there,” said Deb Gullett, a devoted former aide to McCain. Gullett said Lake had never reached out to her.
Instead, Gullett is campaigning with Gallego. She recently joined him in Phoenix at the home of Robin Shaw, the co-chair of the state’s Republicans for Harris chapter, alongside Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and a dozen or so other Republicans and independents for a chat about the importance of crossing party lines.
That kind of outreach has allowed Gallego to drive up his numbers, pulling in soft Republicans. But many of those Republicans aren’t backing Trump either. That alone doesn’t explain the polling gulf between Lake and the former president.
Polling suggests that gap has been driven in large part by a specific set of ticket-splitters: Latinos, especially Latino men.
Plenty of surveys show Trump making gains with younger Latinos. Gallego, the son of Colombian and Mexican immigrants, aggressively courted those voters as well, using what he called “culturally smart ways to talk to Latinos,” including infrequent voters.
He’s hosted barbecues in Latino neighborhoods and campaigned at rodeos. He brought a taco truck to a local boxing gym, hosted a viewing party for a match with a famous Mexican prize fighter and held an event at an auto body shop with lowriders.
Gallego said that when voters tell him they are splitting their tickets for Trump and him, he sometimes tries to persuade them to consider Harris, but other times “we just have to focus on our campaign.”
One thing Trump and Gallego share: They’re both men running against women.
Lake gave up an impressive career as a TV anchor in 2021, ran for governor and became a MAGA lightning rod. She has mimicked Trump’s disdain for the media, brash style, key policy positions and penchant for falsely claiming election fraud.
But what works for Trump doesn’t always work for other Republicans.
It’s a dynamic that is not unique to Arizona. Trump is consistently polling ahead of GOP Senate candidates across the country, even those who have fully cloaked themselves in his brand of politics.
Yet Lake’s gap in Arizona is one of the most jarring examples because she rose to prominence by styling herself in his image. Some of Lake’s most dedicated supporters worry that the double standards applied to women are hurting her.
Pima County GOP Chair Dave Smith described Lake as “powerfully charismatic.” But he’s heard from some that her communication style upsets them because she’s “abrasive sometimes.”
“Yeah well, you know, Trump’s abrasive as hell. You know, I’m abrasive,'” he said, adding: “Women get judged differently and I know it’s not fair.”
But Lake forcefully rejects any suggestion of sexism.
“Bullshit. That’s just crazy woke talk,” Lake said. “I don’t speak that language. I’m not voting based on somebody’s genitalia. I don’t give a shit about that. I care about what you stand for.”
Lake said her recent internal models showed her behind Trump by only two points. And, she said, she is broadening her coalition with independents and Democrats who approach her “every day” to express support on the campaign trail. And she did reach out to prominent members of the state’s GOP establishment and tried to connect more with business-minded Republicans.
But her financial gap with Gallego has undoubtedly hamstrung her.
Gallego had the airwaves to himself for months as he cast himself as a veteran willing to work with both parties. His ads have relied heavily on Lake’s own words, using tape of her comparing abortion to genocide, vowing that abortions will not happen in Arizona and claiming that she was the “duly elected” governor of the state.
“Maybe some of the things during the governor race have bled over,” said Tom Murphy, the mayor of Sahuarita, Arizona, who endorsed Lake and showed up at an early-voting rally to support her. “And you can always capture a sound bite that all of us maybe — we wish we would say differently.”
