Arizona Republican Kari Lake doesn’t have a political future in the state after a judge in Maricopa County threw out her lawsuit over the 2022 election results last week, according to a GOP consultant in Arizona.
Lake, a Trump-backed Republican who repeatedly cast doubt on the results of her gubernatorial election loss, announced that she would appeal the judge’s ruling. Earlier this week, she was also ordered to pay $33,000 in fees incurred by Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs (D) and her team.
Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based Republican consultant, told The Hill on Friday that Lake has caused herself harm as a result of the “degradation” of Arizona institutions.
“I think the enormous amount of ill will that she’s going to create as a result of the appeal — I mean, it’s OK to file a case, but then some of the stuff she’s been saying on media and posts and just the degradation of the Arizona institutions — I think is really going to hurt her out here,” Coughlin said.
“And I don’t really think she’s got a future in terms of her own electoral space here in Arizona,” he added.
While Coughlin opined that Lake’s political future looks bleak in Arizona, he told The Hill that she could still be a “key surrogate” in former President Donald Trump’s attempts to take the state in the 2024 presidential election.
“I see it more as a stepping stone into whatever ’24 presidential cycle holds, and how she can be a spokesperson for a Trump candidacy,” he said.
Another Arizona GOP strategist, Barrett Marson, also indicated to The Hill that Lake could be a spokesperson for Trump.
Marson said he wasn’t convinced that Trump, whose recent presidential campaign been marred by the House Jan. 6 committee’s referral of criminal charges against him to the DOJ and a controversial dinner with openly antisemitic public figures, would pull Lake in as his choice for vice president during his 2024 presidential run.
“If she had won this race, if she had become governor, yes,” said Marson. “But now — you can be a lot of things in Trump World, but you can’t be a loser.”