Former news anchor and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has filed federal paperwork to run for U.S. Senate in 2024, challenging for the seat held by incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.
Though Lake has not yet formally announced, she appears to be teasing such a move on her social media pages.
“In just ONE WEEK, we will take our next steps in this incredible journey that we’ve been on together,” Lake wrote on X, the social platform once known as Twitter. “I can't wait to LAUNCH our movement into the future with all of you!”
Lake, a favorite of the far-right wing of the Republican Party, has openly entertained a Senate run since her loss to Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs in 2022.
After losing the governorship by more than 17,000 votes — or a 0.67% margin, Arizona’s narrowest gubernatorial election since the 1990-91 election of Fife Symington — Lake kept her name in headlines for months and months afterwards with a series of rallies, visits to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and lawsuits challenging her loss.
Lake plucked her post-election tactics directly from Trump’s playbook. She denied her defeat, insisting that the contest was among the “most dishonest elections in the history of Arizona,” and filed lawsuits seeking to challenge the results.
Her baseless claims have been repeatedly debunked, and her lawsuits were dismissed or denied by all three levels of Arizona’s state courts for a lack of evidence. In one instance, a Maricopa County judge dismissed Lake’s claims, writing that he could not "accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence."
In a recent lawsuit, Lake filed a public records complaint seeking to review all early ballot voter signatures in Maricopa County. That decision is pending.
Lake complicates an already cloudy race. Sinema’s abandonment of the Democratic Party in favor of becoming an independent does not appear to have helped her popularity among voters. An Emerson College poll suggests that Sinema would come in third in a three-person race, behind Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego and Republican former sheriff Mark Lamb, another supporter of Trump’s election denial movement.
“It appears Sen. Sinema pulls more support from Republican voters than Democrats on the ballot. About 21% of Republicans would vote for Sinema with Lamb on the ballot,” Emerson College pollster Spencer Kimball said. “By contrast, Sinema only pulls about 8% of Democratic support from Gallego.”
While Sinema has not announced her plans for 2024, she has continued to raise money for a potential race. A document obtained by NBC News indicates that her campaign sees a “path to victory” by winning 60-70% of independent-registered voters, 10-20% of Democrats and 25-35% of Republicans.
Before running for office, Lake was a Phoenix-area news anchor who very suddenly took a hard swing toward conspiracy theories in the late 2010s.