Can Kari Lake win Arizona's Senate race? 'It’s a real question mark'

Kari Lake’s expected entry into Arizona’s U.S. Senate race has Republicans and other political observers bracing for an unavoidably bumpy ride for the GOP.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is already running for the GOP nomination, have reacted differently to the prospect of Lake's Senate run, political observers said.

The NRSC has long viewed Lake as an inevitability and a difficult candidate whose financial support from the organization will hinge on how viable her campaign looks moving forward.

One Arizona political operative said her support could depend on polling in the race after Arizona’s August primary; another said her campaign had improved its standing with the NRSC after a second round of meetings earlier this year that suggested a more serious operation, including downplaying election denialism.

It remains to be seen whether allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will spend in the race. Both the NRSC and the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund have projected that West Virginia, Montana and Ohio are priorities over Arizona.

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In the 2022 election, McConnell-aligned groups redirected money from Arizona to Ohio late in the election season. That hurt Blake Masters, Arizona’s 2022 GOP Senate nominee.

By contrast, Lamb has shrugged off Lake’s looming candidacy, giving no indication before and after her announcement that he intended to cede the nomination to someone who hasn’t even formally said she wants it, according to two people familiar with the sheriff’s thinking this week.

A spokesperson for Lamb’s campaign could not be reached for comment Friday. In a statement, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and NRSC chair, sidestepped the issue of helping Lake.

“We have had productive conversations with Kari Lake and her team,” he told The Arizona Republic. “She is a talented campaigner with an impressive ability to fire up the grassroots. We have a clear path to victory with two Democrats on the ballot in Arizona.”

National Republicans remain skeptical of Lake's candidacy because she has yet to tone down the election rhetoric and because she continues to travel around the country on behalf of former President Donald Trump, making some wonder about how committed she would be to an Arizona Senate campaign.

Lake posted Thursday on the social media platform X that "The Maricopa County government (at ALL levels) is rotten & corrupt and the whole world knows it."

And Lake was in court last month to make her case that she should have access to the voter signatures on signed early ballot envelopes.

Taken as a whole, it points to a contested Republican primary, at least for the near term, and a wait-and-see approach to backing Lake, who is a star in conservative media circles and a prominent Trump surrogate.

Before Lake even enters the race, it seems, the former news broadcaster and failed gubernatorial candidate has injected newfound uncertainty into the race for the seat held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.

Sinema hasn’t officially said she plans to seek a second six-year term, but her campaign spending throughout the year suggests she has been quietly running all along. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., formally entered the race in January and faces no prominent opposition to his party’s nomination.

The race is especially confounding for the moment, with little polling and the rare prospect of a three-way contest that alters the normal electoral algebra, political observers said.

“I think it’s more likely than not it’s a three-way contest and we haven’t seen a ton of polling numbers,” said Jessica Taylor, who tracks Senate and gubernatorial races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“We may not know until much later what Sinema is going to do. … This is the hardest race on the 2024 Senate map to handicap just because there’s so many unknowns that remain.”

Lake announced Thursday that she is planning an “announcement rally” on Oct. 10 and she could quickly leapfrog over Lamb’s campaign in money and attention. Lamb entered the race in April and his fundraising for the first three months was a lackluster $608,000.

That helped draw interest to the possibility that Masters could make another run, but the New York Times reported Trump personally helped squelch that scenario in a conversation with Masters.

Lamb has not backed away.

Erin Covey, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Inside Elections, said Lamb could stick around for a time and force at least some loss of resources for Lake in a primary.

“At the end of the day, he’s not going to be a serious threat to Lake but could definitely force her to spend money in a primary, which would weaken her ahead of a general election,” she said.

Taylor and Covey both noted that Senate Republicans in Washington are far more focused on at least three races nationally that would figure to gain significant cash from the GOP’s biggest donors.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., faces stiff reelection headwinds in a state that voted heavily for Trump in 2020. Manchin has flirted with a third-party presidential run in a sign of the difficulty for Democrats running in West Virginia.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, similarly represents a state with a history of solid Republican support in the Trump era. Brown has shown uncommon personal popularity in Ohio, but the state has shifted far to the right over his lengthy career and the GOP seems likely to spend heavily to win his seat.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., also holds a Senate seat from a deep red state. Republicans face the possibility of a contested primary there, but regardless view the state as more winnable than most Democratic-held seats this cycle.

“In terms of national support, Republicans don’t need to win Arizona to take back the Senate,” Covey said. “If Kari Lake is the Republican nominee, there are definitely Republicans in D.C. that are not going to be motivated to help her. … They have three better opportunities already.”

Taylor agreed.

“This is not a race they have to win,” she said of Arizona. “Just the three-way nature of that keeps it in the mix. It’s one of three races that we currently rate as a toss-up. I put it there mainly because there’s so many unknowns.”

“They might outwardly be OK with her running,” Taylor said of GOP powerbrokers. “But when push comes to shove, and … you have to triage (money) into the most winnable races, is this one up there? It’s too early to tell. It’s a real question mark.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Can Kari Lake win Arizona's Senate seat in a three-way race?