Comment Former news anchor and Trump-backed candidate Cary Lake has won the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona, emerging as a candidate who has embraced the former president’s false campaign claims in a key state. Lake did so after early declaring victory Wednesday when she held only a narrow lead over land developer Karrin Taylor Robson (R), who received the endorsements of former Vice President Mike Pence and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R ). And Lake has already warned that her own primary could be tainted by fraud for which she has refused to provide evidence. “We voted against the fraud, we didn’t listen to what the fake news was saying,” Lake told reporters, according to the Arizona Mirror. “The MAGA movement rose up and voted like their lives depended on it.” Kari Lake predicted cheating before qualifying day Lake’s victory was one of several for prominent Arizona election naysayers. If these Republicans win in November, they will have the power to dramatically upend the electoral process in a pivotal state in 2024 and beyond. Arizona has become ground zero for baseless 2020 election conspiracies after Joe Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump there — the first time a Democrat has carried the state since 1996. Lake will face Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) in the general election. Hobbs defended the Arizona election process as responsible for certifying Biden’s 2020 victory. “This bitter primary race that has torn apart the Republican Party locally and nationally has finally come to an end, and the result is a candidate who has taken an extreme position on abortion, elections, guns and more,” said Raquel Teran , the president. of the Arizona Democratic Party. Other election naysayers who prevailed in Tuesday’s Arizona GOP primary election included venture capitalist Blake Masters, who will now face Sen. Mark Kelly (D) in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races, and candidate Secretary Foreign Mark Finchem. Masters posted an ad saying “I think Trump won,” and Finchem, a state lawmaker, was outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, before rioters stormed the building in a deadly attack. He has identified himself with the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group and self-proclaimed militia, and said he would certify the 2020 election results in Arizona if he had the power to do so. Backed by prominent election conspiracy theorists MyPillow founder Mike Liddell and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, Lake said she does not recognize Biden as the country’s legitimate president. He said that if he had been governor in 2020, he would not have certified a Biden victory. And if she wins in November, Lake’s most dramatic election-related proposals would eliminate vote-recording machines like the Dominion Voting Systems electronic equipment Maricopa County uses. where more than half of Arizonans live and replace them with people who will hand-count millions of ballots from individual precincts where voters would have to vote in person. State officials, many of them Republicans, have warned that counting all ballots by hand would make it impossible to meet legal deadlines. Lake, if elected, also wants to end mail-in voting, replacing it with one-day elections, and strengthen voter identification and verification requirements already in place in Arizona. The 52-year-old mother of two began her career in Iowa after studying journalism at the University of Iowa. After years in the industry that ended with her being frequently criticized for sharing misinformation on her social media accounts, Lake left her anchor position at Phoenix’s local Fox station in March 2021. Three months later, she announced her campaign for governor. Full Arizona results here Lake won Donald Trump’s endorsement in September and has modeled her campaign in many ways after the former president’s. Even before the primary, Lake was telling her supporters not to trust the results of Tuesday’s primary – unless she wins. See who Trump has endorsed in the Republican primaries If Lake wins in the fall, her leadership would move the state further to the right after Joe Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election — a potential shift that has many more conventional Republicans in the Grand Canyon State worried. Lake has pledged to try to implement election-related policies that could fundamentally change how Arizonans vote — and how their votes are counted. Hannah Knowles, Colby Itkowitz and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this report.