Republicans Roundly Boo Kari Lake Following Scandal

Arizona Republicans let Kari Lake have it last weekend as they hurled boos and jeers her way at a state GOP meeting following a scandal involving her and the now-former head of the state’s party.

The brutal reaction arrived following the resignation of Arizona GOP chairman Jeff DeWit after Lake’s surreptitiously recorded audio showed him pressing Lake, a Trump-endorsed election denier running for U.S. Senate, to stay out of office.

DeWit claimed that the conversation was “selectively edited” and denied that he asked her not to run for office after she lost in the state’s gubernatorial race back in 2022. Lake had secretly recorded DeWit, and released it on Jan. 24 after sitting on the evidence for ten months.

“We don’t agree on everything,” Lake told the crowd.

“Anything!” a Republican state committee member responded, amid a mixture of boos and cheers. Another attendee, when Lake accused Arizona’s election process of corruption, shouted back, “you did it!”

A sea of boos

The recording threw the state party into chaos ahead of its annual meeting on Saturday. Lake, who has been rumored as a vice presidential pick for Trump, spoke at the Arizona Republican Party meeting in Phoenix on January 27. There she nominated the MAGA extremist and election denier Gina Swoboda to replace DeWit before she got hit with a sea of boos.

Republican state committee members donate, volunteer for campaigns, and do voter outreach—and without their support, candidates usually don’t last long. The under-the-table recording between Lake and DeWit has left many within her party disgruntled.

Their dissatisfaction with Lake owes to a number of situations, including her claim in 2022 that she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine”—a machine that many Republicans at Saturday’s meeting consider themselves part of.

DeWit, who was elected party chair in 2023, was seen as a trusted and experienced operative who could bridge the bitter divide between Trump loyalists and old-guard Republicans in Arizona, many of whom were brought into the party by the late Sen. John McCain.

Kari Lake is always wearing a wire

While running for governor, Lake would regularly record her interactions with reporters, at times arriving at campaign events wearing a microphone. After the election, Lake’s campaign posted a video of a phone call where a Maricopa County attorney used profanity and raised his voice in response to comments from the campaign that he considered threatening. 

Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington, bruised by a disappointing showing in the midterms, were talking openly about plans to recruit GOP Senate nominees who would be more viable in general elections.

Locally, Republicans in Arizona are desperately trying to build unity among party members so they can start winning elections again. In the past six years, they’ve lost two US Senate seats, the governor’s office, the state attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office, and are closer to losing control of the state legislature than they’ve been in decades.

Plus, they’re running low on cash: the state Republican Party only has about $150,000, compared to the Arizona Democratic Party’s $1 million war chest.