And that’s a huge red flag in a candidate for public office.
Before the 2022 election, in which Lake ran for Arizona governor, she repeated Trump’s election lies and claimed her own election wouldn’t be fair unless she won. That’s a slap in the face — no, a hard punch — to our nation’s democratic ideals.
After losing by more than 17,000 votes, not least because she turned off tens of thousands of Republican voters, Lake (photo below) asserted she’s the real governor and sued to overturn the election. A trial judge and appeals court rejected her allegations as baseless. She’s vowing to appeal to the Arizona supreme court (and appealing for donations to her legal fund, see story here), but that will be difficult if she gets her lawyers suspended or disbarred (see story here).
At this point, it would be fair to say Lake is untethered from reality, which in itself should disqualify her from holding any public office. We don’t want delusional people making critical decisions that affect our schools, public services, law enforcement, and so on.
But now Lake is flat-out lying. On Friday, February 17, 2023, she tweeted that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Trump rival for the GOP nomination, was “endorsed by George Soros.” That isn’t remotely true (see backstory here).
There’s a context for this absurd claim, of course. Lake has big ambitions: She hopes Trump will pick her as his 2024 running mate. (That won’t happen; she’s never been elected to anything, and lost her only election race.) So she’s trying to ingratiate herself to him, and is sucking up to his voter base, by smearing DeSantis. (“Soros” is a dirty word on the far right.)
This demonstrates that Lake will (A) say anything, (B) hit below the belt, and (C) sell her soul to anyone she thinks can advance her political ambitions. Part of this is also drawing attention to herself. Being ignored is the worst thing that can happen to a politician.
Holding public office is for serving the public. Lake is out to serve herself, and has no ethical or moral restraints on what she’ll do to further her own interests. She has no experience in government, has the wrong temperament for governing, and has displayed a shocking ignorance and contempt for our laws and legal system.
Why is this worth talking about? After all, she lost the governor’s race. Well, Lake probably isn’t going away. She won’t be anybody’s V.P. nominee, at least not anytime soon, but she’s likely to jump into the 2024 Arizona Senate race (for the seat currently held by Kyrsten Sinema). And given a possible three-way race and the irresponsibility of Republican voters these days, it’s conceivable she could win.
She should not win that election or any other. There’s nothing to be gained for the people of Arizona in electing her. They were right to reject her in 2022, and if she seeks office again, voters should continue to repudiate her kind of ambition.
