(This story was updated to add new information.)
U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has been a fixture of the national spotlight since her 2022 gubernatorial run, from a speech at the Republican National Convention to being skewered on “Saturday Night Live.”
Lake is perhaps most known nationally as an election denier who narrowly lost her gubernatorial bid and for her unflinching support for former President Donald Trump. The former newscaster also consistently demeans the media she once belonged to.
Entering the final weeks of her Senate campaign, Lake has fallen well behind the Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, in campaign funds. Public polling has showed him generally leading the race since U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., said in March she would not seek another term.
Who is ahead in AZ's US Senate race?Polls, bettors point in one direction
Where was Kari Lake born?
Kari Lake, 55, is the youngest of nine children and daughter of Sheila and Larry Lake, a nurse and a public school teacher.
Kari Lake is a native of Iowa and studied journalism at the University of Iowa.
Where did Kari Lake work on TV? She was best known as a Fox 10 anchor
Lake moved to Arizona to begin working as a weather reporter at 12 News in her late 20s. That’s where she met her husband, Jeff Halperin, to whom she has been married for more than 25 years.
After her stint at 12 News, Lake left Arizona for a brief stint in Albany, New York, before joining Fox 10’s news team. That is where she became a familiar face to Phoenix area residents.
Lake worked at Fox 10 news in Phoenix for 22 years before ending her career in early 2021, with most of that time anchoring the nightly news alongside fellow anchor John Hook.
During her tenure, Lake interviewed then-Presidents Barack Obama and Trump.
Who are Kari Lake’s family?
Lake and her husband, Jeff Halperin, have two children together, Ruby and Leo.
Halperin now works as an independent photographer and has helped out in Lake’s campaigns. Lake has noted her husband is Hispanic as she has sought to make her family’s ethnicity a point of connection with Arizona’s sizable Latino electorate.
Previously, Lake was married to Tracy Finnegan, an electrical engineer, in Davenport, Illinois. The two divorced decades ago.
What is Kari Lake’s faith?
Lake was raised Catholic, according to a lengthy profile of her in the Washington Post during her gubernatorial run.
During her tenure at Fox 10, she was into Buddhism, the Post reported.
These days, Lake describes herself as evangelical.
Earlier this year, Lake drew national attention for telling her supporters to prepare for the coming election, in part, by “maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.”
Just before that, however, she also said, “We are going to put on the armor of God.”
How did Kari Lake get into politics?
Lake entered the crowded 2022 gubernatorial race as a political novice. In a video announcing her departure from Fox 10, she said she was no longer proud to be a journalist and felt like the media was driving “fear and division” in the country.
By that time, Lake had repeatedly demonstrated a conservative bent on social media problematic for a journalist expected to present facts, not opinions.
In 2018, she apologized on the air after a tweet that declared the teacher-led “#RedForEd” push for public school pay raises “is nothing more than a push to legalize pot.”
In 2019, Fox 10 management took her off the air for a week after she used the F-word during a Facebook Live event that began earlier than she expected.
Lake was criticizing Fox 10 management for requiring her to remove a reference to the conservative social media site Parler in her station-branded account.
She also disparaged Phoenix New Times, which covered the Parler controversy. Lake said of the publication, “They’re 20-year-old dopes. That’s a rag for selling marijuana.”
In April 2020 — scarcely a month into the coronavirus pandemic — Lake repeatedly shared on social media a video from doctors advocating lifting shelter-in-place restrictions.
Two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Lake said on social media she was “disturbed” by the purge of Trump’s access to the platforms, calling it an attack on the First Amendment.
Weeks later, Lake addressed her break from on-air duties, citing undisclosed health issues. In a social media post, she said, “the truth is I’ve needed a bit of privacy at this time.”
In March 2021, she announced she was quitting her job at Fox 10. Three months later, she filed paperwork to run for governor.
How did Kari Lake win her Senate primary?
Lake’s leading challenger for the Republican nomination was Mark Lamb, who has served as Pinal County sheriff since 2017. She easily outraised him, cornered the market on major political endorsements and beat Lamb by 16 percentage points in a race that never seemed close.
Lamb, the self-dubbed “America’s Sheriff,” made headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he refused to enforce a stay-at-home order on the grounds that he believed it was unconstitutional. Lamb also oversaw a plan to deputize police work to a “posse” of armed citizens in response to the protests after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Lake’s win was expected, but two weeks before early voting began, her campaign said she was ahead by 30 percentage points. It did so to justify her refusal to debate Lamb in person. But because her victory margin was significantly less than that, it suggested an underwhelming performance among Republican voters.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., ran unopposed in his primary.
They are both seeking the seat held by the retiring U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.
Where does Kari Lake stand on top issues?
Lake continues to claim without evidence that Trump won the 2020 election in Arizona, and she has said she would not have certified Biden’s election if she had been governor at the time.
She has said she wants to flood the southern border with law enforcement to keep an “invasion” of migrants at bay and, when she ran for governor, was the only Republican candidate to pledge to work to combat homelessness, offering a plan that provides more resources but also threatens criminal penalties.
Lake has shifted tone several times on abortion rights. After the U.S. Supreme Court erased federal abortion rights in June 2022, Lake initially supported Arizona’s near-total ban on the procedure that dated to 1864.
Immediately after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the 19th century law still applied, Lake backpedaled and said that approach is “not where the people are.” Facing criticism from opponents of abortion rights, Lake said it was unfortunate the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general wouldn’t enforce the territorial-era ban on abortions except to save the mother’s life.
She also campaigned on banning critical race theory, which for some has become an umbrella term for a curriculum that teaches about systemic racism. She supported implementing the Hillsdale 1776 curriculum, which was deemed as conservatives’ response to teachings like the 1619 Project, which examined American history through the lens of slavery.
What are Kari Lake’s controversies?
Lake centered her gubernatorial campaign on inflammatory and baseless claims about U.S. elections. After her narrow loss in 2022, Lake expanded that to her own election defeat.
She filed several failed lawsuits seeking to overturn her loss — a legal position she maintains even as she is running for the Senate.
Lake voted as a Democrat between 2008 and 2012, supporting Obama’s first term. Lake has attacked the late Sen. John McCain’s legacy, calling him a “loser.” One of McCain’s sons, Jim McCain, who considered Lake a friend, said he and family members felt betrayed by Lake’s flip.
She also claimed she was a life member of the National Rifle Association, though she would not provide proof of her membership before 2021.
In January, Lake released a secretly recorded conversation from March 2023 at her home involving Jeff DeWit, who then headed the Arizona Republican Party.
Citing unnamed “very powerful people who want to keep you out” of running for office in 2024, DeWit asked her to name her price for that.Lake refused what she considered a bribe.
When news of the recording broke, it led DeWit, a top Trump loyalist in Arizona, to resign his job and confirmed something to the political class that was understood among the media: Lake frequently records her interactions with others.
In May, Lake campaigned in Show Low under a Confederate battle flag at a Trump-themed store. When that matter sparked pushback, Lake didn’t disavow the flag or the cause associated with it.
Why was Kari Lake sued for defamation?
Last year, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican, sued Lake for defamation over false allegations that he was involved in election-related misconduct.
Richer’s lawsuit alleged that Lake’s baseless comments made him and his family “the target of threats of violence, and even death, and have had their lives turned upside down.”
Lake didn’t challenge his allegations and the case now moves to assessing what, if any, damages Lake owes Richer. She maintains there are no damages from her statements.
“The political elite will do anything to hold onto power,” Lake wrote in a social media post. “They’ve resorted to filing a ludicrous defamation lawsuit to try to stop me and bleed me dry. Taking part in this lawfare just legitimizes it.”
Richer said Lake’s request for a default judgment in the case amounted to “complete and total surrender.”
