Today, Explained - Kari Lake is MAGA’s rising star

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Perhaps the most consequential midterms in US history are this week. Arizona’s Kari Lake, a former news anchor turned gubernatorial candidate, embodies much of what’s at stake. Stacey Barchenger from The Arizona Republic explains. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Amanda Lewellyn, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Will you accept the results of your election in November? I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result. If you lose, will you accept that? I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result. It's midterms week, people. The stakes are very high this year, in part because some Republican candidates have been cagey about whether they'll accept the results of the election. That includes Carrie Lake, who's running for governor of Arizona, and who you heard there artfully dodge a question about whether she'll accept a loss.

Over the weekend, someone mailed a package containing an unidentified white powder to Carrie Lake's campaign headquarters, and the FBI is investigating. In response, Lake, who is both admired and feared for her powers of oratory, managed to sum up both her specific situation and the next and final weeks of 2022. We're in dangerous times.

We're in dangerous times. Coming up on Today Explained. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Today, today explained. My name is Stacey Bartschinger.

I am a state politics reporter at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, and my life is covering the gubernatorial race. Tell me about Carrie Lake. Carrie Lake is 53 years old. She's a mother of two, known here in Arizona for her career for 22 years as a television news anchor here in Phoenix on Fox 10. You're watching the best Fox 10 News at 9. And thanks for joining us tonight. We begin with the Fox 10 News alert. The body of a missing six-year-old girl has been found. That's how people knew her. And then ultimately in March of 2021, she published a video saying that she didn't believe in the journalism that she was doing anymore, that it wasn't accurately capturing Arizonans. And she publicly resigned her position. Sadly, journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom.

And I'll be honest, I don't like the direction it's going. One of the things that makes Carrie Lake so unique is she has turned on her former profession and done it, frankly, very well in a way that really speaks to voters. I found myself reading news copy that I didn't believe was fully truthful or only told part of the story. And I began to feel that I was contributing to the fear and division in this country by continuing on in this profession. It's just one of the things that makes her such a fascinating candidate, frankly.

Another thing that makes her fascinating is the fact that Carrie Lake was a registered Democrat once upon a time. She said in the past she voted for Barack Obama's presidency because of his promise to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then something obviously changed. When did you all in Arizona start to see that? Yeah, I mean, I think there is a perception out there that she has become conservative just in the campaign. And I actually don't think that's true. If you look at her final few years at Fox 10, you know, she was making some comments that generated headlines themselves. You know, there was a big push in Arizona for public school funding, and she made a claim that it was actually like this covert operation to legalize marijuana,

which it was not. And I made an incorrect conclusion in my tweet. And for that, I'm sorry. I've talked to some of her former colleagues. You know, they all talk about this being a just truly genuine shift to Republican ideology. Several of her friends we spoke to say she found Trump to be funny and defended his crassness. She began spreading Internet conspiracy theories. You can take the hydroxy chloroquine as a preventative. And then she refused to acknowledge Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. And then, of course, she resigns her job in March 2021. Three months later, I'm Carrie Lake. I'm running for governor. And Arizona, I'm asking for your support. Announces she's running for governor of Arizona. She gets former President Donald Trump's endorsement

and it is undeniable that the two of them have a sort of special charisma. He speaks about her in very laudatory language. Carrie Lake, your next governor. She's an incredible woman, incredible person. Along the campaign trail, she has sort of had this say-anything style that I think really a lot of people identify as something that Trump sort of championed. I think it comes down, frankly, to one sentence. We want to replace the woke garbage with common sense. It's pretty simple. Stacey, let me ask you about a strategy we saw in this midterm campaign. The Democrats meddled in at least a dozen Republican primaries by giving their support in the form of ad dollars to the

most outrageous far-right candidates with the idea that those candidates would win primaries and then they would lose the general election. Carrie Lake is outrageous. What was the Democrats' strategy with her and this race in Arizona? The GOP primary here was four candidates, Carrie Lake, and then a more establishment candidate, Karen Taylor Robeson. She's a developer, a lobbyist, closely aligned with Governor Doug Ducey, sort of that more traditional wing of the Republican Party.

Kerry and Karen were really the two frontrunners in that race. And in July, the state Democratic Party put out a sort of tongue-in-cheek email thanking Karen Taylor Robeson for her support of the Democratic Party. And what this actually was, was they had pointed to a few thousand dollars of donations that Taylor Robeson had made to Democratic candidates in Congress and in Phoenix municipal races to kind of highlight, you know, this contradiction and raise questions, I think, about her, you know, GOP history.

I would put my record of donating to Republican candidates and conservative causes up against anybody running for office today. The thing is, Karen Taylor Robeson self-funded her campaign and put in $22 million. So a few thousand dollars to Democrats really doesn't compare with the money that she spent supporting Republicans throughout her career here in Arizona. You know, the Democrats are coming after me now because they know I'm the nominee that they're going to have trouble beating in November. They want Carrie Lake to win because they know they can defeat her. That's like really low key meddling. We're going to tell you about Karen's low level financial support for a couple of Democrats, thereby casting Republican suspicions on Karen and making Carrie look like the better choice for Republicans. And we're Democrats.

But, you know, also, Carrie Lake used to be a Democrat. She voted for Obama, made donations to Obama. She found God, guns, and the GOP about a day and a half before she decided to run for governor. I mean, it is just a fake. She is an opportunist. And so there's plenty of questions to raise about both candidates in the primary and their records there. Carrie Lake is probably most widely known for her stance on the 2020 election. She has said she believed that Trump won Arizona, although he didn't. Anybody who was involved in that corrupt, shady, shoddy election of 2020, lock them up. She continues to make claims that election procedures here in Arizona were not

followed, that ballots were received late, or raising concerns about chain of custody problems that have all been debunked. Beyond elections, she has made some claims that have really turned some people off. She was at an event where she sort of made light on the attack on Paul Pelosi, saying, It is not impossible to protect our kids at school. They act like it is. Nancy Pelosi, well, she's got protection when she's in D.C. Apparently her house doesn't have a lot of protection. But that was well received by the crowd that she was in front of, but certainly has generated some controversy since then about just making light of a terrible attack. Right. And that's how she gets this reputation of being the candidate who, as you put it,

will say anything. That has made her distinctive, even in 2022, when it seems like anyone will say anything. Tell me about this event that happened over the summer. In August, she was at a rally here with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and both of them certainly considered rising stars in Republican politics with potential future aspirations. But there was this moment where Kerry was talking about his sort of style, and she referenced this phrase. I'll tell you what he's got. I don't know if you heard of this, but he's got BDE. Anybody know what that means? I hope listeners can fill in the blank there. They can. But she makes this reference, tells people to ask your kids about it

later, and then tries to couch it as big DeSantis energy. He's got the same kind of BDE that President Trump has. And it really is certainly not something I've ever heard said by a politician. And I mean, she hasn't said it since. So how it played, I think that's telling. Where is Carrie Lake on the issues that people in Arizona really care about, on the issues that they're voting on? When it comes to the economy, which we know people are really feeling it in their wallets right now, she has a plan to work with the legislature to prevent municipalities from charging grocery and rent taxes. We're going to reduce and get rid of the grocery tax and the rental tax. So if you pay rent, you won't have to pay tax on that. She is making border security the forefront of her campaign. Carrie has said that she will secure the border.

And in September, she was at an event talking about border cartels that traffic people and drugs and what she's going to do, and just directly quoted Donald Trump's controversial words. She cited the former president and then says, They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. And they are rapists. And that's who's coming across our border. That's a fact. You know, really casting all migrants in this broad, negative light. She wants to use an unproven and potentially problematic legal idea of declaring an invasion at the border to use state law enforcement resources as deportation officers.

I will issue a declaration of invasion and we will work to stop these narco-terrorists from human trafficking and drug trafficking into Arizona. The campaign is pitching this as the big idea that she is going to do to defend the state. Even if it means a lawsuit, it will at least test, you know, what else states can be doing when, you know, as they portray the Biden administration just failing at the border, not really doing anything. Our federal government has allowed this border to be wide open, allow criminals to come in, allow drugs to pour in, and they've done nothing about it. What is she saying to voters about voting itself? You know very well that this has been a big issue in Arizona.

So she frequently calls Joe Biden the illegitimate president. You could say Biden won the presidency kind of like OJ is innocent. In terms of actual policy, she has joined a court case to end early mail-in voting here in Arizona, which is how the vast majority of people cast their ballots. She's also filed a lawsuit to get rid of electronic vote tabulation machines, which would just slow down the process, be very challenging in terms of requiring a hand count of ballots. She has shifted a little bit how she talks about the 2020 election. Now she really frames it as citizens just trying to ask questions about election procedures. We have the right, it's protected with our First Amendment, to question our government and to question elections. Which is just a sharp contrast to her own claims just ahead of the

primary that she had detected stealing going on. She has refused to provide any evidence of that and has largely sort of let that go in the last three or four months. On abortion, she has supported a very restrictive law that's on Arizona's books that bans abortions in almost every single circumstance unless, you know, a woman's life is in jeopardy and levies prison time against any doctors that provide abortions outside of those circumstances. More recently, she's also expressed an openness to another law that is on the books here in Arizona that bans abortions after 15 weeks. Even when pressed, Lake wouldn't say which law she supports. Neither law includes exceptions for rape or incest. However, Lake insisted the 15-week ban

does. The latest way that she's talking about this is she will follow the law, whatever it is, and we're waiting for courts to decide which is the prevailing law that Arizonans should follow. Hey, have you interviewed Carrie Lake? Yes, once. She agreed to sit down with me once before the primary for about 20 minutes to talk about her border security plan. I'm really prepared for another hit piece from the Republic. The good news is our polling is showing that every day you guys write a hit piece

on me or every week and it's not sticking. One of the unexpected things about interviewing Carrie Lake is anytime you talk to her or you interview her, you are also on camera. Her husband is her cameraman. They have this full operation, like multiple cameras, the big boom mic above your head that's like listening to everything. I understand why you are attacking my, you know, having lived here a short period of time. This is a state of newcomers. Lots of people are from. I'm just saying, Stacey, you don't understand what the people of Arizona want. You don't understand the people because you haven't had a relationship like I have. And the campaign will publish those videos.

So you've gone from being a print reporter to a television reporter overnight. Yeah, I really was not prepared for that. But here we are. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great Thank you. photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday, and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody.

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or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. We're back with Stacey Barchinger. She's a state politics reporter at the Arizona Republic. And Stacey, reminding ourselves that this race is a race, tell me about Katie Hobbs, who's running against Carrie Lake for governor. So Katie Hobbs is 52. She's the Democratic nominee. She has two children. Before running for office, she worked in social work and in the domestic violence advocacy arena. About 10 years ago,

she ran for office, was elected to the state legislature in the House of Representatives, then quickly moved over to the state Senate, where she was chosen for a leadership role in 2018. She ran for statewide office and was elected Arizona's Secretary of State. In that job, she is our chief elections official overseeing elections. And that is really where we saw her come to national prominence in defending the state's 2020 election procedures and votes for Joe Biden. There have been no irregularities in the process. The process is open and transparent. There are observers. Everything that we're doing is following law and procedure in terms of counting the ballots. Her leading sort of campaign message, I think, says it all. It's a choice between sanity or chaos.

She, of course, being the sanity in that equation. Katie Hobbs refused to debate Carrie Lake. Her stated reason for not doing the debate is that Carrie Lake is a conspiracy theorist and, you know, kind of what is the point of going up against someone that doesn't deal in the truth. I have no desire to be a part of the spectacle that she's looking to create. Carrie Lake, at every single opportunity, tries to paint Katie Hobbs as a coward for not doing the debate. She's, have you heard she's refusing to do debates? Not going to do debates. Somebody just said coward. Okay, I didn't say it, you did, but I agree with you, all right?

She has people showing up in chicken costumes. So just a sharp contrast in sort of the styles, I would say, of these two candidates. And just one sort of data point to that is Saturday Night Live spoofed Carrie Lake. Great to be with you, Judy, on your sweet little show full of lies. And it was in the cold open, Cecily Strong as Carrie Lake. You know, she's always like camera ready. I'm just a regular hometown gal, constantly in soft focus and lit like a 90s Cinemax softcore. Hitting on the election denial stuff, but then also just sort of how Carrie Lake speaks to the media. Now, one of your main campaign issues is the denial of the 2020 election. Can you media types just get over the one thing I've made the center of my campaign for months and months? So kind of hitting on that. Historically, Arizona has been

a red state, but in 2020, the state went very narrowly for Joe Biden. Without asking you to prognosticate too much, do the polls show this race breaking red or breaking blue. It's pretty tied. The latest poll I saw was a New York Times Siena College poll that put it exactly even. Certainly, it appears that Carrie Lake has some momentum over these last couple of weeks that she is gaining ground, which, you know, I think matches what we've seen for the Republican momentum generally this cycle. But it's a pretty even race. Arizona is obviously at the center of some high profile fights over voting,

allegations of voter fraud. Do you think Carrie Lake will consider this a fair contest? Will she concede if she loses? What has she said? She went on CNN a couple of weeks ago and was asked multiple times if she would concede if she loses. She refused to say that she would do so. Will you accept the results of your election in November? I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result. If you lose, will you accept that? I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result. More recently than that, in another interview, you know, she said she would accept the results of the election. If we have a fair, honest and transparent election, absolutely 100%. Neither of those are direct confirmations that, you know, yes, she would concede if she loses.

And I think if you rewind and look back to the primary about a week before that election, it was another very, very close race. And we heard Carrie Lake claim stealing was going on. Without evidence, she has not provided any. We're already detecting fraud. The top Republican candidate for governor, Carrie Lake, telling a roomful of supporters that efforts to steal the election are already underway. So perhaps, you know, those claims from the primary are a signal of what's to come. What I hear you saying is Arizona has a remarkably charismatic candidate who knows how to talk to voters, who knows how to use the press, who knows how to get the attention of Donald Trump. If she loses, it doesn't sound like we've necessarily seen or heard the last of Carrie Lake.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think you're totally right. You know, she's been floated as a potential vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. He was asked about this and said, you know, let her be governor first. Let Carrie get to be governor. But she's she's going to be around a long time. She's very respected and very strong. I think it's certain that Carrie Lake is going to be a prominent figure, whether it's in politics or, you know, in the media going forward, even after this election here in Arizona. All right, so this is a big week for the U.S. It could be days, it could be weeks before we

know the final, final, final outcome. In the meantime, I want to let you know that we have some fascinating and possibly, most importantly, rigorously fact-checked midterms shows coming up this week. Tomorrow, we ask whether the country would be better off if voting were mandatory. And then on Wednesday, we're going to start to break down the results from the most important races across the country. Today's show was an Avishai Artsy production. It was edited by Matthew Collette, in fact, checked rigorously by Laura Bullard. It was engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you