Kari Lake gave Senate campaign speech in front of a Confederate flag

U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake recently held a campaign event in Show Low that included a Confederate battle flag prominently displayed behind her.

According to a picture published by London’s Guardian, the unmistakable pattern of white stars on blue lines arranged diagonally over a red background hung on a wall at the Trumped Store, where Lake spoke last week as part of a political event with the store’s owner, Steve Slaton.

Slaton is running for the Arizona Legislature and his military record has also become a source of controversy.

In a written statement, the Lake campaign told The Arizona Republic, “Kari Lake went to a store. The campaign doesn’t own the store.”

The campaign told the Guardian it "does not respond to British propaganda outlets. We stopped doing that in 1776."

Lake is running for the seat currently held by the retiring U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is challenging Lake for the GOP nomination, and U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is the only member of his party running for the seat.

For Lake, the optics of an image of her in front of the symbol of the Confederacy could undermine her efforts to reach Arizona’s sizable independent voters and deepen the Democratic narrative of her as an extremist.

The front-runner for the Republican nomination in Arizona's U.S. Senate race has been a polarizing figure in state politics since her 2022 gubernatorial run, and she frequently has appealed to the far right.

She has, for example, appeared in an interview with antisemite Stew Peters and was scheduled to participate in a 2022 political conference hosted by prominent white nationalist Nick Fuentes before pulling out of the event.

The store Lake visited is named for former President Donald Trump and sells an array of Trump-themed items.

In 2018, The Arizona Republic described it this way: “It’s a one-stop emporium of all manner of President Donald J. Trump merchandise — T-shirts, caps, Trump teddy bears and talking Trump toilet paper rolls.”

Lake’s visit already generated controversy for Slaton, who claimed in an April radio interview with Payson’s KMOG that he was a Vietnam War combat veteran.

“I was a combat veteran in Vietnam for four months in support of the missions of the South Vietnamese and patrolled along the DMZ,” he said.

Days later, the Mountain Daily Star reported that Slaton’s official military records show he was stationed in South Korea during 1974, serving mostly as a helicopter mechanic.

Slaton is one of six Republicans running for two spots in the House in the heavily Republican northeastern Arizona district.

The 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police triggered a national reckoning around slavery and race that included a purge of symbols of racism and the Confederacy.

In Arizona, for example, several Civil War-themed monuments were quickly removed, and in 2023 Tempe officials renamed streets that had been named for people identified as members of the Ku Klux Klan a century earlier.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake, Arizona Senate hopeful, spoke in front of Confederate flag