Help, America! Arizona is stuck in a Kari Lake time warp and we can't get out

While the rest of the world moves on, we in Arizona remain stubbornly stuck in a time warp, an endless loop of election denialism that every day delivers yet another heaping, helping plateful of MAGA.

Making Arizona Groan Again, that is.

That, and laying the groundwork to ensure that the 2024 election in this swing state is just as disastrous for Republicans as 2022.

This week’s episode from the Lake-was-robbed crowd thus far includes more phony a-HA! moments, an incoming Republican legislator’s petition for a new election, another Republican legislator’s lawsuit claiming that Maricopa County disenfranchised Mohave County, more requests for money (naturally) and a pronouncement by Lake that the fate of the republic rests upon whether she is crowned queen … or something like that.

Rogers uses lawsuit to raise cash for herself

We’ll begin with some of the biggest kooks in the state Legislature.

State Sen. Wendy Rogers, the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Election Committee, on Sunday used the occasion of Kari Lake’s lawsuit challenging the election to ask for more money … for herself.

“We are not just howling at the wind,” writes Rogers, who for two years has been howling at the wind and taking millions in campaign donations by doing so. “Those of us Arizona patriots who care about the truth of our elections are fighting back – RIGHT NOW. I am Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers, and I am helping in a massive response to the stolen 2022 Arizona election. Help me rally Republicans and Arizonans to fix this election mess!”

Rogers, R-Flagstaff, also informed us on Monday that Lake will be governor, so “watch out”.

Other senators call for a redo election

From there, we’ll move to Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, who on Monday sued Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett.

“Mohave County voters were disenfranchised and Borrelli is doing something about it!” proclaimed the Mohave County Republican Central Committee, which announced the lawsuit.Lest Borrelli fails, don’t fret. Incoming state Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, has started an online petition drive demanding a do-over of Maricopa County’s election. By signing, you'll also automatically receive his newsletter (and I would guess, his future requests for money).

“The Election Integrity Network has these eyewitness reports: Based on their experiences, 85% of the poll observers and election workers in Maricopa County are ‘not at all confident’ about the outcome of the election,” Kern's petition begins. “95% of respondents said their biggest concern with the election process was the ’voting technology.’ ”

Anyone want to tell Kern that a partisan survey is not evidence?

Or that there’s no provision in state law to redo an election?

Also on the money hunt: the Arizona Republican Party. On Tuesday, party leaders put out a blast asking people join them in demanding an investigation "into Katie Hobbs for her tyrannical assault on the First Amendment that she is hoping will be swept under the rug, all while she bullies her way to the Governor's Office."

Or put another way, because the Secretary of State's Office in January 2021 flagged a pair of tweets that contained "election related misinformation" about the county's voter registration system and the 2020 election.

"Join us: Demand the Hobbs investigation ASAP," the party asks, with a link to a website where you can give money to the state party.

Lake's campaign says a-HA! to nothing

Kari Lake’s campaign, meanwhile, continues on like the Energizer Bad Bunny. When it comes to churning out distortions and outright disinformation to rev up the base, Team Lake just keeps going and going and … .

On Monday, the campaign produced yet another a-HA! moment, designed to illustrate the many ways in which the Republican-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors was out to get Lake.

Or, looked at from another, more honest, perspective:

The Lake War Room photo, by the way, was apparently “uncovered” by Rich Baris, who calls himself “the People’s Pundit” and is one of the experts cited in Lake’s lawsuit challenging the results of the election.

“Look What Maricopa Lake Haters Have,” Baris announced on social media last week.

It was Baris who, according to Lake’s lawsuit, did an exit poll of 813 voters and from that concluded that anywhere from 15,603 to 29,257 of her supporters were unable to vote. (She lost to Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs by 17,117 votes.)

Up next: Kari Lake decries activist judges

Finally, we move to Lake herself, who now has a nonprofit to which gullible supporters and easy marks across the nation can donate. The Save Arizona Fund was incorporated on Dec. 5  by attorney Tim La Sota and is being run by Lake’s key campaign adviser, Carolyn Wren, and campaign supporter Nicholas Moore.

No telling what the money will be used for after what Lake is calling “one of the strongest Election Lawsuits in history” is tossed out due to lack of evidence.

Lake, on Monday, made her usual circuit of the far-right journalistic glitterati to air her grievances and generally do whatever it takes in her scorched earth campaign to ensure that Republicans have no chance of recouping their losses in 2024.

“We need to nail down every elected Republican and ask them where they stand on the 2022 election!" she said on Steve Bannon’s podcast.

“The people who voted, the hundreds of thousands of people who voted on Election Day, got caught up in this madness, this several hours’ line. They're also awake now and they're like, ‘Wait a minute. You need to do something about this. How many more rigged elections can we afford in this country before we lose the country altogether?‘ ” she told another conservative podcaster. “So I think more people are waking up and I’m hoping there’s some judges out there who realize that on their shoulders rest the future and the survival of the republic.”

Coming next week (or perhaps the week after): In which Kari Lake decries the activism of judges appointed by Republican governors.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake's time warp sucked in Arizona and we can't get out