The Arizona governor’s race is attracting millions in outside spending. An anti-Trump Republican group is targeting GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake. According to Axios, the Republican Accountability PAC is spending $2 million on a TV and digital ad campaign.
Gunner Ramer told Axios Phoenix that the ads will target college-educated, suburban moderates and will focus on how Lake promoted the false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
“It is about putting Donald Trump on the ballot in a way when you have a candidate like Kari Lake who repeats Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election constantly,” Ramer stated.
The PAC website includes video testimonials from Republicans who won’t vote for Lake. One voter, Kevin, described himself as a disenfranchised Republican. “We have a person with no experience in anything except reading scripts about the news,” he stated.
The website also highlights the reasons why they are working against Lake. “Election lies are the cornerstone of Kari Lake’s campaign. She says she wouldn’t have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results, and it’s likely she would will refuse to certify the state’s results in 2024 if a Democrat wins. That means disenfranchising millions of Arizonans just to please Trump,” the website states. “Her other policy positions are just as extreme. She wants to disband the FBI and said she supports Arizona’s 1901 abortion law — which has no exceptions for rape or incest. We can’t trust someone like Kari Lake to lead Arizona. Republican Accountability PAC will make sure Arizonans remember why she must be defeated in November.”
Ramer said the PAC will focus on Arizona because Lake is one of “the terrible anti-democracy slate of candidates” who won in the Republican primary this year. He believes that having Lake in a position where she would be responsible for certifying the 2024 presidential election results in Arizona “could lead to something catastrophic for our democracy.”
Ross Trumble, the campaign spokesperson for Lake, expressed confidence that Lake’s allies would outspend PACs that are going after the gubernatorial candidate. “This is an irrelevant group of perpetual losers, and their media buys this cycle have been laughably small,” Trumble stated.
The Republican Governors Association plans to spend $10.6 million in airtime for the general election. They also began running ads against Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs immediately after the primary election.
Additionally, the PAC is running ads against Republican candidates in other states, including Herschel Walker in Georgia and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania.
The AP spent months last year tracking potential voting fraud cases across Arizona and other battleground states. Despite Trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud, the AP’s initial tally from July was fewer than 200. That number dropped after Pima County completed its review of 151 voter fraud cases and concluded none merited criminal charges.
