Kari Lake faces self-inflicted McCain challenge in Arizona Senate bid

Kari Lake danced on John McCain’s political grave in 2022, but the late Arizona senator may get the last laugh this November.

Ms. Lake’s criticism of Mr. McCain and his brand of Republicanism in her failed gubernatorial campaign is coming back to haunt her as she looks to broaden her appeal with moderate Republicans and independent voters in her bid for the U.S. Senate.

Her recent attempts to play nice and recast the disparaging McCain remarks as a joke are meeting some stiff resistance and outright scorn — including from his family.

Meghan McCain, the late senator’s daughter, says Ms. Lake has already shown her true colors and says she is softening her message purely for political reasons.

Polls, meanwhile, show Ms. Lake’s MAGA magic is working in the primary but could cost her, for a second straight time, in the general election.

“Kari Lake’s charmless charm offensive isn’t going the way she hoped,” said Barrett Mason, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. “Instead, she’s reminding moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents just how much vitriol she held for them.”

“Kari Lake of 2022 is Kari Lake’s worst enemy in 2024,” he said.

Ms. Lake is running to unseat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat who switched in late 2022 to become independent. With candidate filing deadlines fast approaching, Ms. Sinema running out of time to enter the race.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, is also running.

Noble Predictive Insights released a new survey this week showing Ms. Lake is the runaway favorite to win the GOP nomination. She has a 30-point lead over her chief rival, Sheriff Mark Lamb.

Mr. Gallego, however, holds a 47% to 37% lead over Ms. Lake in a hypothetical general election matchup. The Gallego lead shrinks to 3% when voters also have the option of tossing their support behind Ms. Sinema.

An Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released Thursday had similar findings.

“In Arizona, MAGA Republicans can easily win a GOP primary. But they struggle with McCain-style Republicans in suburban Phoenix,” said David Byler, chief of research at NPI. “There’s a chunk of moderate Republicans who would pick Gallego over Lake in a two-way matchup, Sinema over both of them in a three-way race, and a bland, generic Republican over anyone – if the GOP would nominate one.”

Those surveys help explain why Ms. Lake has been looking to mend fences with the Republicans she turned off in 2022 with a Trump-inspired, take-no-prisoners campaign that included criticizing McCain, who represented the state in the Senate for three decades.

Mr. Trump took a similar approach in the 2016 GOP presidential primary.  

Exempted from military duty during the Vietnam War due to a bone spur diagnosis, Mr. Trump mocked the idea that McCain should be considered a war hero after his fighter jet was shot down and he was held captive for more than five years in a prison dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton.”

Ms. Lake sought in 2022 to tap into the anti-McCain sentiment that Mr. Trump previously whipped up.

She boasted at CPAC about how she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine” before making a stabbing motion with her hand and basking with a smile in the crowd’s applause. In the run-up to the general election, Ms. Lake said if there were McCain supporters in the room they should “get the hell out.”

In a radio interview with KTAR in Arizona this week, Ms. Lake said her comments were made in “jest.”

“I think if John McCain, who had a great sense of humor, would have heard it, he would have laughed,” she said. 

Ms. McCain, however, rejected the idea, saying it smacks of desperation and saying there will be no truce.

Ms. McCain posted, “NO PEACE [EXPLETIVE]!” on social media and later dismissed Ms. Lake’s ensuing efforts to find common ground with her as a fellow “Mama bear.”

“The internal polling for Kari Lake’s campaign must just be staggeringly awful and scary for them when it comes to independents and McCain Republicans not voting for her,” Ms. McCain said on KTAR. “I think there is some kind of data they have seen that shows there is a giant swath of Arizonans who will never vote for this woman — in no small part because of how much she attacked my dad, who is a beloved Arizona icon.”

“It is why she can’t win Arizona,” she said. “If she is looking for absolution, she should go to her priest, not me.”

Asked what changed between 2022 and 2024, the Lake campaign said she is dedicated to a big tent approach this time.

“Kari Lake is focused on uniting Republicans in Arizona and defeating Biden and Gallego come November,” a Lake spokesperson said in an email. “She will work with any Republican who wants to make Arizona a better state.”