Who is Kari Lake? What to know about the US Senate candidate speaking at the RNC 2024
U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake again steps into the national spotlight Tuesday with a short speech at the Republican National Convention, along with other GOP Senate contenders.
For Lake, the occasion is a chance to further raise her visibility with Republican donors and to add to her national political persona.
Lake is perhaps most known nationally as an election denier who narrowly lost her 2022 gubernatorial campaign and for her unflinching support for former President Donald Trump. The former newscaster also consistently demeans the media she once belonged to.
Her speech comes as Lake has fallen well behind the Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, in campaign funds and as public polling shows him generally leading the race since U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., said in March she would not seek another term.
U.S. Senate race: Kari Lake, Mark Lamb report modest campaign cash
Who is Kari Lake?
Lake, 54, worked at Fox 10 news in Phoenix for 22 years before ending her career in early 2021, with most of that time anchoring the nightly news alongside fellow anchor John Hook.
A native of Iowa, she is the youngest of nine children and daughter of a public school teacher. She studied journalism at the University of Iowa. She moved to Arizona to begin working at 12 News in her late 20s.
That’s where she met her husband, to whom she has been married more than 25 years. They have two children.
Lake left Arizona for a brief stint in Albany, New York, before joining Fox 10’s news team. That is where she became a familiar face to Phoenix area residents. During her tenure, Lake interviewed then-Presidents Barack Obama and Trump.
Who are Kari Lake’s family?
Lake is the daughter of Sheila and Larry Lake and is the youngest of nine children. She and her husband, Jeff Halperin, have two children together, Ruby and Leo.
Halperin previously worked as a videographer for 12 News. Lake also worked for the Phoenix station as a weather anchor in 1994 before she went to spend the majority of her career as a journalist at Fox 10.
Halperin now works as an independent photographer and has helped out in Lake’s campaigns.
Previously, Lake was married to Tracy Finnegan, an electrical engineer, in Davenport, Illinois. The two divorced decades ago.
How did Kari Lake get into politics?
Lake entered the crowded 2022 gubernatorial race as a political novice. In a video announcing her departure from Fox 10, she said she was no longer proud to be a journalist and felt like the media was driving “fear and division” in the country.
By that time, Lake had repeatedly demonstrated a conservative bent on social media problematic for a journalist expected to present facts, not opinions.
In 2018, she apologized on the air after a tweet that declared the teacher-led “#RedForEd” push for public school pay raises “is nothing more than a push to legalize pot.”
In 2019, Fox 10 management took her off the air for a week after she used the F-word during a Facebook Live event that began earlier than she expected.
Lake was criticizing Fox 10 management for requiring her to remove a reference to the conservative social media site Parler in her station-branded account.
She also disparaged Phoenix New Times, which covered the Parler controversy. Lake said of the publication, “They’re 20-year-old dopes. That’s a rag for selling marijuana.”
In April 2020 — scarcely a month into the coronavirus pandemic — Lake repeatedly shared on social media a video from doctors advocating lifting shelter-in-place restrictions.
Two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Lake said on social media she was “disturbed” by the purge of Trump’s access to the platforms, calling it an attack on the First Amendment.
Weeks later, Lake addressed her break from on-air duties, citing undisclosed health issues. In a social media post, she said, “the truth is I’ve needed a bit of privacy at this time.”
In March 2021, she announced she was quitting her job at Fox 10. Three months later, she filed paperwork to run for governor.
Who are Kari Lake’s Senate opponents?
Lake’s leading challenger for the Republican nomination is Mark Lamb, who has served as Pinal County sheriff since 2017.
Lamb, the self-dubbed “America’s Sheriff,” made headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he refused to enforce a stay-at-home order on the grounds that he believed it was unconstitutional. Lamb also oversaw a plan to deputize police work to a “posse” of armed citizens in response to the protests after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Elizabeth Jean Reye, a trained neuroscientist in Paradise Valley, is also on the ballot for Republicans.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is the only person seeking his party’s nomination.
They are all seeking the seat held by the retiring U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.
Where does Kari Lake stand on top issues?
Lake continues to claim without evidence that Trump won the 2020 election in Arizona, and she has said she would not have certified Biden’s election if she had been governor at the time.
She has said she wants to flood the southern border with law enforcement to keep an “invasion” of migrants at bay and, when she ran for governor, was the only Republican candidate to pledge to work to combat homelessness, offering a plan that provides more resources but also threatens criminal penalties.
Lake has shifted tone several times on abortion rights. After the U.S. Supreme Court erased federal abortion rights in June 2022, Lake initially supported Arizona’s near-total ban on the procedure that dated to 1864.
Immediately after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the 19th century law still applied, Lake backpedaled and said that approach is “not where the people are.” Facing criticism from opponents of abortion rights, Lake said it was unfortunate the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general wouldn’t enforce the territorial-era ban on abortions except to save the mother’s life.
She also campaigned on banning critical race theory, which for some has become an umbrella term for a curriculum that teaches about systemic racism. She supported implementing the Hillsdale 1776 curriculum, which was deemed as conservatives’ response to teachings like the 1619 Project, which examined American history through the lens of slavery.
What are Kari Lake’s controversies?
Lake centered her gubernatorial campaign on inflammatory and baseless claims about U.S. elections. After her narrow loss in 2022, Lake expanded that to her own election defeat.
She filed several failed lawsuits seeking to overturn her loss — a legal position she maintains even as she is running for the Senate.
Lake voted as a Democrat between 2008 and 2012, supporting Obama’s first term. Lake has attacked the late Sen. John McCain’s legacy, calling him a “loser.” One of McCain’s sons, Jimmy McCain, who considered Lake a friend, said he and family members felt betrayed by Lake’s flip.
She also claimed she was a life member of the National Rifle Association, though she would not provide proof of her membership before 2021.
In January, Lake released a secretly recorded conversation from March 2023 at her home involving Jeff DeWit, who then headed the Arizona Republican Party.
Citing unnamed “very powerful people who want to keep you out” of running for office in 2024, DeWit asked her to name her price for that. Lake refused what she considered a bribe.
When news of the recording broke, it led DeWit, a top Trump loyalist in Arizona, to resign his job and confirmed something to the political class that was understood among the media: Lake frequently records her interactions with others.
In May, Lake campaigned in Show Low under a Confederate battle flag at a Trump-themed store. When that matter sparked pushback, Lake didn’t disavow the flag or the cause associated with it.
Why was Kari Lake sued for defamation?
Last year, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican, sued Lake for defamation over false allegations that he was involved in election-related misconduct.
Richer’s lawsuit alleged that Lake’s baseless comments made him and his family “the target of threats of violence, and even death, and have had their lives turned upside down.”
Lake didn’t challenge his allegations and the case now moves to assessing what, if any, damages Lake owes Richer. She maintains there are no damages from her statements.
“The political elite will do anything to hold onto power,” Lake wrote in a social media post. “They’ve resorted to filing a ludicrous defamation lawsuit to try to stop me and bleed me dry. Taking part in this lawfare just legitimizes it.”
Richer said Lake’s request for a default judgment in the case amounted to “complete and total surrender.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Who is Kari Lake? What to know ahead of RNC speech
