But overnight, Lake made up the ground she had lost to Karrin Taylor Robson, her primary challenger for Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nomination. Now, on the cusp of winning the primary, Lake and her allies found themselves scrambling to explain how the election she was about to win was still, somehow, as corrupt and fraudulent as they had already claimed it was. “There is no path to victory for my opponent, and we won this fight, period,” Lake proudly declared to a group of supporters, but that didn’t stop her from warning them that cheating was going on. “But there are a ton of problems with the system,” the candidate warned, before promptly predicting victory again. “We will win it when the votes are counted,” the candidate said. “We are not going to accept that our electoral systems are so messed up.” Before Lake even spoke, MAGAworld pundits were already at work spreading rumors, without evidence, that election malpractice was afoot. Far-right blog The Gateway Pundit wrote that something “suspicious” had happened at the match, adding that it was “another [Brad] Special Raffensperger.” As Lake followed Robson late at night, others resurrected a number of conspiracy theories from November 2020. One involved an allegation that poll workers intentionally distributed Sharpies to voters that would invalidate their ballots. A second, election officials allegedly printed ballots on thinner-than-usual paper, causing would-be MAGA loyalists’ ballots to be thrown out due to leaking ink. Both were debunked shortly after it was tabled after the 2020 election, when Arizona’s Pima County tweeted: “No ballots will be rejected because of the method used to color the ovals,” referring to “Sharpiegate.” But that didn’t stop Trump supporter Charlie Kirk and Turning Point US partner Drew Hernandez from launching “Sharpiegate 2.0.” “I was absolutely furious today when my family called me and told me they had to redo their ballot multiple times,” said Trump supporter Charlie Kirk, “because Sharpy was bleeding on the ballot.” Similarly, the far-right Real America Voice correspondent Ben Berquam, citing one alleged voter he spoke to, claimed that this time the ballots were printed on “thicker paper.” “Sharpiegate 2.0, here we come!” echoed Turning Point USA contributor Drew Hernandez. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an early and outspoken Lake supporter, tried to play down ideas of voter fraud and the belief of a decisive Lake victory. “He won, what do you say? Of course, there was election fraud,” he told the Daily Beast in an interview on Wednesday. “He won despite the algorithm,” he added, trying to justify the apparent discrepancy between the two ideas. “So much corruption in Arizona!” The Lake campaign did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment, and the race had not yet been announced as of Wednesday night. In a manner befitting one of the most high-profile far-right culture warriors and conspiracy theorists of the 2020 election, Lake is now a critical step closer to the top office of a battleground state. In a contest that has become a costly and ugly proxy war between GOP factions, Lake’s victory amounts to a triumph for the MAGA wing — and a blow to Republicans who had grown hopeful that the party could overcome Trump’s cult of personality and 2020 electoral obsession. A well-known local news anchor turned political firebrand, Lake has been endorsed by Trump and a host of Trump-world dignitaries and fanatics. In turn, it endorsed baseless claims and narratives about the 2020 election and bolstered Arizona Republicans’ shambolic efforts to prove that Trump actually won the state. Robson, meanwhile, had the support of much of the state’s GOP establishment — including Gov. Doug Ducey, a Trump nemesis — along with former Vice President Mike Pence. Although she ran on hard-line conservative positions on hot-button issues, Robson steered clear of Trump’s rhetoric in 2020 and said Republicans needed to move on. Robson’s camp has adopted a strategy to paint Lake as fake, emphasizing her past liberal views and her past support for Barack Obama. At one point, Robson’s allies ran an ad, narrated by a drag queen, attacking Lake for hanging out with drag queens before turning on them as part of the MAGA culture wars. Although Lake was ahead in the early polls of the race, Robson spent a staggering $15 million of her own money on her campaign, which funded an advertising blitz that helped her launch within striking distance of Lake. While some Arizona Republican voters were puzzled that Trump endorsed Lake given her history, some found her story — a member of the media turned anti-media crusader — compelling, not contradictory. Beyond that, many GOP voters in Arizona clearly have an appetite for red meat for the 2020 election. The stage is now set in Arizona for one of the most competitive and consequential gubernatorial races in recent memory. On Tuesday, Democrats nominated Katie Hobbs — the secretary of state whom Lake called for jailed on baseless fraud charges.
