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Former candidate for Arizona governor Kari Lake urged grassroots conservatives on Friday to watch out for so-called RINOs: Republicans in Name Only.
Lake recently lost her gubernatorial bid to Democrat Katie Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes. Although she contested the results—echoing former President Donald Trump‘s claims of widespread fraud—Lake so far has been unsuccessful in having the election overturned.
Speaking with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on Friday, Lake claimed the “RINO side of the party” is “panicked” and that her movement is “alive and well.” She also praised Trump and noted that she modeled her campaign off the former president’s “America First agenda.”
“When you’re in politics, you are working for the people. You’re not the boss; the people are the boss, and we need to get back to that,” Lake told Kirk. “And right now, we’re watching this RINO class of our party try to go into all of these small legislative districts and claw back control. And I want the grassroots to know: Don’t give them a damn inch.”
Mario Tama/Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images
Lake’s bid for Arizona governor was backed by Trump, who endorsed scores of other GOP candidates in their own unsuccessful midterm campaigns. Lake refuses to admit defeat in last year’s gubernatorial race—filing legal challenges—and has continually called herself the state’s “duly-elected governor.”
Trump regularly hurls the “RINO” insult at his detractors, too.
Arizona’s then-Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, landed in Trump’s crosshairs after he certified Joe Biden‘s win in the state’s 2020 presidential election. The former president slammed Ducey while endorsing Lake in the GOP primary, writing in September 2021: “She will do a far better job than RINO Governor Doug Ducey—won’t even be a contest!”
Lake, a former TV anchor, ripped a page from Trump’s playbook while out on the campaign trail. Back in June, she blasted an Arizona state lawmaker, Rusty Bowers, as a RINO after he cast doubts on claims that the 2020 election had been rigged against Trump.
In her Friday interview with Kirk, Lake also defended her party’s candidates during November’s midterms. Some political observers had predicted that a “red wave” would sweep the nation, but a number of Trump-backed candidates failed to secure their seats.
Despite those losses, Lake still insists that the crop of MAGA candidates had been “excellent.”
“We had excellent candidates. We had exceptional candidates, and I’m going to pat myself on the back,” she told Kirk. “My candidacy was one of the biggest things in politics that Arizona has ever seen.”
Newsweek reached out to a Lake representative for additional comment.
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