Kari Lake Slams 'Terrible Options' for Arizona Senate as She Teases Run

Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake recently bashed the state's "terrible options" for U.S. Senate candidates as she continues to tease a run in 2024.

Initially entering the public eye as a longtime news anchor, Lake gained national attention when she ran for governor of Arizona during the 2022 midterm election. Running as a Republican, Lake established herself as a staunchly MAGA-aligned candidate, espousing many of Donald Trump's political stances and later garnering his endorsement. Ultimately, Lake lost the race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by around 17,000 votes.

In a similar fashion to Trump's denial of the results of the 2020 election, Lake has consistently refused to concede in that race, claiming instances of voter disenfranchisement from faulty machines led to her defeat. She has brought numerous lawsuits attempting to have the results overturned, all of which have been rejected. Despite this lack of electoral success, Lake remains a persistent and outspoken voice on the right, making many speaking appearances over the last year and teasing a future run, this time for the seat of Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

In a series of posts to X, formerly known as Twitter, over the last week, Lake has made increasingly overt hints about her senatorial intentions. On Tuesday, she posted a video featuring a montage of news coverage and headlines about her speculated Senate run, with one sound bite mentioning that the announcement would come in October.

In another post from Thursday, Lake told followers to "mark [their] calendars," sharing an image of her own silhouette alongside a date: Tuesday, October 10. Later, on Friday, she made another post, this time calling out Sinema and her Democratic challenger, Ruben Gallego.

"Arizona has two TERRIBLE options running for Senate right now," Lake wrote. [Ruben Gallego], an unhinged Marxist, who believes that border security is racist. [Kyrsten Sinema] continues to claims [sic] she's an Independent, yet she votes with Biden more often than Bernie Sanders does. Arizonans want something different. They want a Senator who will put them first."

Newsweek reached out to Gallego's and Sinema's campaign via email for comment.

Initially elected as a Democrat in 2018, Sinema gained notoriety in recent years, alongside Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, for her consistent opposition to key parts of President Joe Biden's political agenda, causing numerous measures to stall out in the Senate. She has also been a prominent voice opposing the abolition of the filibuster. In December, she formally left the Democratic Party and became an independent.

Given the trouble she has caused for Senate Democrats, it was widely expected that Sinema would face a primary challenge. In January, Gallego, the U.S. representative for Arizona's 3rd District, announced his run against Sinema. Since then, he has seen considerable fundraising achievements, outraising the senator in the first half of the year.