In one of the most closely-watched Senate races in America, Republican Kari Lake is running against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), whom she referred to as “Nancy Pelosi with a beard” in an interview with the Washington Reporter.
Gallego, Lake said, is on the wrong side of virtually every issue facing Arizonans. The top issues she hears from voters are “border, border, border,” she said. “You might say, ‘well, what about the economy?’ Well, the border is affecting our economy as well. What about crime? Well, the border is affecting crime. If we secure the border, we stop the invasion at the border, and we take the people who’ve poured in to our country in the past three and a half, four years, and we send them back to their homeland, repatriate them back, we’re going to see our economy boom…We can actually start doing better things for our own citizens.”
Lake’s opponent has a muddled record on the issue of border security. “He called the border wall dumb and stupid, and he said he would never, ever, ever build it,” she said. “Now, with his rebrand, he’s trying to say, ‘well, maybe we need it.’ People aren’t falling for it. He has rubber-stamped every terrible policy…One of the crazier things that they’re pushing for is making taxpayers pay for sex changes for illegal immigrants who are behind bars. This is insane.”
Should Lake win next month, she wants her first bill “to be a one or two page clean piece of legislation fully funding and expediting the construction of the southern border wall from the Gulf Coast all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and get that built quickly.”
In order to win next month, Lake has to overcome two specific obstacles: a media landscape tilted toward Gallego, and an influx of opposition funding.
“It’s almost unsafe,” she said of the media. “Unsolvable at this point. It’s the worst media in the whole country. The main newspaper here just did 20 attack pieces on me in a row. Their opinion writer is dangerously, in a very frightening way, obsessed with me and writes at least one, sometimes up to two, or more op-eds against me every day. It’s really creepy. The good news is, while the horrible media in this town may have turned on me, the people of this state have not. The people of this state are firmly behind me.”
Arizona media’s lack of curiosity about Gallego’s background was recently highlighted by the unsealing of his divorce files, which came only after the dogged work of a national outlet, the Washington Free Beacon. “Nobody in Arizona pushed to get them out, and then when they came out yesterday, we had journalists reaching out, saying, ‘I don’t see where the damning information is.’ And I thought, ‘wow, you don’t think it’s damning that a man broadsides his wife with divorce papers days before Christmas?’”
Lake has used her background in journalism to get the truth out about Gallego’s “anti-woman” record, she said. “He’s been anti-woman for a long time.”
“When he was at City Hall, he had a hostile workplace harassment claim against him by a 20 year old female intern,” she said. “He got her fired for complaining. Then he went off to the state legislature and had a sexual harassment and other harassment claims made. His own colleagues nicknamed him ‘the troll,’ because of how he treated women. He’s got a pattern of anti-woman behavior.”
Lake pointed to Gallego’s divorce records as an example of “not the kind of character we want in somebody in the United States Senate.”
“He walks out on his wife when she was just a few days away from giving birth, serves her divorce papers right before Christmas, blindsides her, she didn’t expect it to come at all. She thought everything was fine. And then he wants her to pay for his attorney fees? My goodness,” she said.
“The media just takes whatever Ruben Gallego says and runs with it, rather than doing even a tiny little bit of research,” she said. Lake is also facing a deluge of negative advertising. “They’re running $100 million in ads, either for him or against me,” she said. “We’re up against the media that is firmly on his side, and the fact that we’re still standing and doing quite well and showing up, it’s a tight race, but showing up here in the polling is remarkable, and it shows you a good policy, America First policies… [are] what the people of Arizona want. And no amount of fake news can change that.”
Even though Lake has had hostile encounters with the press as a political candidate, she still believes the profession can change for the better.
“We need journalists,” she said. “We need journalism. And I want to call the heads of these corporate media conglomerates in front of a committee and really find out at what point journalism died, and instead they started peddling propaganda. I want to investigate that, but I would tell people who are interested in journalism to go out and be independent journalists.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Kari Lake, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
You were a staple of the Arizona media for decades, a trusted voice in people’s living rooms. What do you think is going on with the media landscape?
Kari Lake:
It’s almost unsafe. Unsolvable at this point. It’s the worst media in the whole country. The main newspaper here just did 20 attack pieces on me in a row. Their opinion writer is dangerously, in a very frightening way, obsessed with me and writes at least one, sometimes up to two, or more op-eds against me every day. It’s really creepy. The good news is, while the horrible media in this town may have turned on me, the people of this state have not. The people of this state are firmly behind me. They recognize now how bad our media is. And thank God for some independent reporters out there who are willing to take a stand and do the right thing and cover this race. They’ve given hundreds of millions of dollars in unearned media, free media, to my opponent. So we’re not only up against my opponent and the Soros millions they’ve got. They’re running $100 million in ads, either for him or against me. We’re up against the media that is firmly on his side, and the fact that we’re still standing and doing quite well and showing up, it’s a tight race, but showing up here in the polling is remarkable, and it shows you a good policy, America First, policies that put our wonderful citizens of Arizona first and will secure the border, bring back that strong Trump economy, bring back safe streets once again, fully funding our police, rather than defunding them, and ending the ridiculous endless wars, that’s what the people of Arizona want. And no amount of fake news can change that.
Washington Reporter:
What’s the reaction been from your former colleagues to you coming out as such an open Republican? Were they surprised by this?
Kari Lake:
I think they were probably surprised. I was surprised that I was going to jump in. I didn’t plan to jump into politics. As a matter of fact, I used to say, ‘who in the right mind would go into politics? It’s so dirty and awful, and they try to destroy people.’ And I only jumped into it because when I walked away from my job and my seven figure contract and said, ‘I can’t do this. It’s propaganda. I don’t want to be part of it.’ I only walked away from that during COVID when I realized what fear and division and propaganda was being pushed and I didn’t want to be part of it. And it was only after that, when I put a video out explaining to the people of this state why I was leaving, that they encouraged me to run for office. And it was dozens upon dozens of people saying, ‘please run for office. We need you to run for office. We need honest people in politics who understand our state, the issues, who understand the people.’ And so that’s why I got into it. And I was even surprised. If you would have told me five years ago, ‘you’re going to be in politics, you’re going to be running and in the center of the political world,’ I would have told you you’re crazy. But here I am. The world’s in a precarious place, and we need to get good, patriotic people who love our country into office, who can’t be bought, bribed, or controlled.
Washington Reporter:
What are the top issues that you’re hearing on the campaign trail?
Kari Lake:
Border, border, border. You might say, ‘well, what about the economy?’ Well, the border is affecting our economy as well. What about crime? Well, the border is affecting crime. If we secure the border, we stop the invasion at the border, and we take the people who’ve poured in to our country in the past three and a half, four years, and we send them back to their homeland, repatriate them back, we’re going to see our economy boom. We’re going to see the price of housing come down because we don’t have to compete with 20 million people who are here. We’re going to see the crime numbers go way down in our streets. We’ll be safer. We’re just going to see incredible things here in our country. And so we got to secure that border, we’re going to see the drugs stop pouring in, and it’s going to be really wonderful when we finally secure the border and stop all of the bad things that are happening between the child trafficking, the fentanyl, weapon of mass destruction pouring into our country, the millions of people pouring in that we have to compete for jobs and housing and services with, and then all of our tax dollars that we’re spending on it, we won’t have to spend on people here illegally. We can actually start doing better things for our own citizens.
Washington Reporter:
What has your opponent, Ruben Gallego, done to exacerbate this border crisis?
Kari Lake:
Well, he’s voted 100 percent of the time with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s policies. He’s further to the left than AOC in the squad. He’s further to the left than Bernie Sanders, and he’s really a Nancy Pelosi with a beard. He called the border wall dumb and stupid, and he said he would never, ever, ever build it. Now, with his rebrand, he’s trying to say, ‘well, maybe we need it.’ People aren’t falling for it. He has rubber-stamped every terrible policy. He voted to have people pouring across illegally, to give them asylum and voting rights. He voted against the SAVE Act. He’s voted to have our federal tax dollars support sanctuary cities and states. One of the crazier things that they’re pushing for is making taxpayers pay for sex changes for illegal immigrants who are behind bars. This is insane, and the people are awake to it. And he actually wants to give Medicare to the people who’ve poured in illegally. That’s going to collapse the system. Everything he’s voted for has been disastrous when it comes to the border. He wanted to have 87,000 new IRS agents. He voted for that. Frankly, we need to get rid of the IRS agents and bring in more Border Patrol, ICE agents, and local police officers to help us with the crime and to make sure that we can get these people, these criminals, back to their homeland.
Washington Reporter:
How are you overcoming the endless earned media he’s getting, along with the deluge of ads that are being aired on his behalf? How do you break through that to get your message across?
Kari Lake:
I’ve had to go back and be a reporter. I’m a journalist, so I am used to informing the population. I think our debate was a really big moment to be able to do that. For the first time, he opened his mouth, and people went, ‘oh, my God, he doesn’t even sound like he’s intelligent. He doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s doing. His policies are terrible. He could barely speak.’ And I think I showed the people that he’s trying for an extreme makeover, but we’re not going to let him run away from his terrible vote record, that he continues to vote against the needs of the people of this state. We’re finding out now that money that’s paying for all of his ads is coming from this ActBlue scheme, and I’m doing the reporting on that and letting people know that. And then we find out that the media is protecting him when it comes to his just horrible divorce, where he left his wife when she was going to give birth any day, and he walked out on her, broadsided at her with a divorce that she did not see coming, and then wanted her to pay for his attorney fees. And then they’ve also covered for him, and I’ve had to report this as well, that his father is a convicted felon, Mexican drug trafficker. He lied and said his dad left him when he was 11. No, his dad was in his life all the way up until he was an adult. And the media just takes whatever Ruben Gallego says and runs with it, rather than doing even a tiny little bit of research, and finding out that when you’ve got cartel connections in your family, it’s really hard to ever get away from that, and might explain some of the votes he’s made, which have ceded control to the cartels on our southern border. He’s empowering the cartels. I want to get in there and confront the cartels.
Washington Reporter:
What should Republican candidates, male and female, do to shrink the gender gap with women while also maintaining the gender gap with men?
Kari Lake:
I don’t even think most voters even know that he walked out on his wife and served her papers. It’s important to know, because it speaks to his character. He’s been anti-woman for a long time. When he was at City Hall, he had a hostile workplace harassment claim against him by a 20 year old female intern. He got her fired for complaining. Then he went off to the state legislature and had a sexual harassment and other harassment claims made. His own colleagues nicknamed him ‘the troll,’ because of how he treated women. He’s got a pattern of anti-woman behavior. Then, when he was in the private sector for a very, very short time, he ran a bank that catered to illegal immigrants, and the bank was investigated for defrauding Latino immigrants out of their life savings. He then went on to an ambulance company that was under federal investigation during Ruben Gallego’s time there for Medicare fraud, and had to do a big payout settlement. And then he walks out on his wife when she was just a few days away from giving birth, serves her divorce papers right before Christmas, blindsides her, she didn’t expect it to come at all. She thought everything was fine. And then he wants her to pay for his attorney fees? My goodness, this is not the kind of character we want in somebody in the United States Senate, and now he’s blaming me for that. I’m not the one who got the records released. A judge said that people have a right to know, and an appellate court said that people need to know, and the Supreme Court even said people need to know. So we need to make sure people understand that he’s got a pattern of anti-woman behavior. If he can’t even treat the mother of his child, his wife well, then we’ve got problems. He ran off with a lobbyist 10 years younger than him, and 38 pieces of legislation that she ordered him to either cosponsor or push through Congress, that’s what he’s done: push through 38 pieces of her lobbying firm’s legislation. I want someone in the U.S. Senate, and I believe the people of Arizona do as well, who is going to represent the needs of our state and our citizens, not the needs of some lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
Washington Reporter:
The only reason those records are public is because of my former colleagues at the Washington Free Beacon suing to get that divorce record unsealed.
Kari Lake:
Nobody in Arizona pushed to get them out, and then when they came out yesterday, we had journalists reaching out, saying, ‘I don’t see where the damning information is.’ And I thought, ‘wow, you don’t think it’s damning that a man broadsides his wife with divorce papers days before Christmas?’ She’s probably thinking everything is fine, and getting the nursery ready. She had to deliver that baby alone. He wasn’t even there for the birth of his son because he ran off with a D.C. lobbyist. That’s despicable, and he’s trying to blame me for it, which I don’t even understand how to respond to.
Washington Reporter:
Your opponent has raised staggering amounts of money via ActBlue. What are your thoughts on that?
Kari Lake:
I understand that they’ve been fighting not having to have the CVV, because it would make it really hard for them to do this scheme called ‘smurfing,’ which we know from some other reporting that they’ve tracked down people here, who are 94 years old, they’re on fixed income, who’ve somehow donated, $300,000 to Democrats, in 2,000 or 3,000 separate donations. Nobody does that. Even if you’re the most ardent donor to politics, you might have a couple hundred donations to politicians, but you’re not going to have 3,285; that’s very bizarre behavior. And you’ve got to give these people credit on the left, they’re diabolically brilliant. They think of all this stuff, and then they say, ‘by the time we get caught, by the time it goes through the courts, we’ll have already used it to take another election.’ And I wish there were more brave attorneys general around the country to take this on. It needs to stop. We’re losing our country. And the left is using all of these different mechanisms, through the courts, through lawsuits, through this smurfing and ActBlue, and shady donors like the Soroses. It’s really frightening, and we need more people to stand up and say, ‘enough,’ and we need people to fight this in court. Hopefully it’s not too late to save our country. You look at numbers in there and what they’ve been able to raise. It defies all logic. We’ve had an incredible fundraising, and I’m not a billionaire, I’m not self-funding. It’s all come from people who love they love us, they love my campaign, they love me as a candidate, and they love our state, and we’re up against, no matter what we raise, he doubles it with all of these schemes, and it’s almost too late. If we can’t win this election, time’s up for America.
Washington Reporter:
Looking to the future, assuming you win next month, what is your first bill that you want to introduce as United States Senator?
Kari Lake:
I’d like it to be a one or two page clean piece of legislation fully funding and expediting the construction of the southern border wall from the Gulf Coast all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and get that built quickly. Anything else we can do to help President Trump quickly get his team assembled and confirmed, so that he can get to work right away, helping to turn this economy around, turn this country around, and, most importantly, secure the border. Definitely want to help him confront these cartels and take down the cartels as well.
Washington Reporter:
Is there anyone that you feel like who would be a particularly good candidate for running HHS?
Kari Lake:
There’s a lot of great people, and I’m gonna let President Trump choose who he wants to have in his cabinet. We’re going to make sure that we quickly get through the confirmation process and make sure we get them confirmed as quickly as possible, if there’s no problems with any of them, because we need to get them up to speed, we can’t have these things dragging out. We need to get them up to speed the people in charge of these departments quickly.
Washington Reporter:
What advice would you give to someone getting started in media right now based on your experience?
Kari Lake:
We need journalists. We need journalism. And I want to call the heads of these corporate media conglomerates in front of a committee and really find out at what point journalism died, and instead they started peddling propaganda. I want to investigate that, but I would tell people who are interested in journalism to go out and be independent journalists. I know a lot of independent journalists, and they do freelance work for several different publications. I think that’s a better way to go about it. We need people who are independent from these conglomerates, because the conglomerates then control the headlines. They control what you say, what you write, what stories they will cover. And I just think independent journalism is what we need, if we can fix the press.
Washington Reporter:
Fantastic, thanks so much for chatting today.