Kari Lake: Election denier calls Arizona loss ‘unforgivable’ as she still refuses to concede race

Arizona’s Republican Party is under pressure to advance far different candidates after losing races for governor, secretary of state and US Senate with candidates relying on extremist rhetoric, antidemocratic agendas and Donald Trump.

A former chair of the state party told Arizona NBC affiliate 12News that Republicans “forgot that one of the jobs is to inspire people, teach them why we believe that the Republican values and principles.

“What happens is that people get exhausted. When you have negative messaging, people just get tired of it,” Robert Graham said. “It’s like a little brother picking at you every single day. Pretty soon, you turn, and you just say, ‘Stop. You can’t do this.’ And that’s what’s happened.”

He suggested that Kelli Ward, the current state party chair who is also under investigation by the House select committee probing the Capitol attack, campaigned with “nothing but vitriol and anger and discontent with the way things have been” and did “nothing to inspire people or bring people together.”

“That’s where you lose,” Mr Graham said. “There was no continuity via messaging. And I think Kelli Ward should be held accountable for that.”

Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward, whose party tanked in statewide elections, is likely to have her phone records in the hands of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol.

She was among so-called “alternate electors” in a scheme to falsely declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The plot relied on a bogus legal theory involving a slate of fraudulent certificates from key states that falsely asserted Mr Trump’s electoral college votes.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court gave the committee the greenlight to access those records.

Republican officials in Arizona are demanding that Ms Ward resign after the party lost races for governor, attorney general and US Senate.

Kari Lake has dropped another hint that she will challenge her election loss to Katie Hobbs.

During her campaign, the Trump-backed Republican repeatedly refused to say if she would accept results that did not declare her Arizona governor.

In the three days since the race was called for Democrat Ms Hobbs, Ms Lake has shown no signs of intent to concede as she branded the results “BS” and “botched”.

On Wednesday evening, she took to Twitter to share a new video suggesting an official legal battle over the outcome.

The video features the Tom Petty classic “I Won’t Back Down” over slow-motion clips of her on the campaign trail.

The twice-impeached former president who fuelled an attack on the US Capitol to overturn the 2020 election appeared to admit on Tuesday night that the party enraptured by his false claims of election fraud did not do so well in midterm elections.

Nearly every candidate he endorsed at the state level in battleground states he lost and then challenged were defeated.

His endorsed Senate candidates in battleground states Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania also failed.

“Much criticism is being placed on the fact that the Republican Party should have done better and frankly, much of this blame is correct,” he said. “But the citizens of our country have not yet realised the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through and the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold.”

Kari Lake and her campaign and allies urged people to attend a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hearing on Wednesday night, where a round of public comments accused the board of being a cancer, issued threats and warnings, and demanded resignations.

The verbal attacks against the board and chair Bill Gates largely focused on printing issues that required county voters to place their ballots in a secure Box 3 that was designed exactly for those scenarios.

But it has been the subject of widespread disinformation and allegations of malfeasance – including from the state Republican party’s own chair and other Lake allies – despite repeated attempts from elections officials to debunk them and ensure that their ballots counted.

Democratic candidate Kris Mayes is leading by only 711 votes in the race for Arizona attorney general, with Republican Abe Hamadeh hoping to eke out a victory after sweeping statewide GOP losses.

If elected, Mr Hamadeh – a Trump loyalist who has refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and was allied with conspiracy theorists Kari Lake and Mark Finchem – would be among only a handful of statewide Republicans in Arizona who won their races this year.

His loss – along with Ms Lake’s and Mr Finchem’s - would be significant blow to Trump’s false stolen election narrative that fuelled races across the US.

Roughly 25,000 ballots remained uncounted statewide as of Wednesday evening, according to the Secretary of State’s Office estimates.

Kari Lake told her supporters she is “still in this fight” and has refused to concede the race for Arizona governor after her projected loss to Katie Hobbs.

In a video posted on social media on Thursday morning, she claimed a “broken election system” has “disenfranchised” “tens of thousands” of voters in an election that also saw Republican incumbent victories and the GOP flipping two House seats. All were on the same ballot with her.

Voters did have to deal with ballot machine issues, but voters had several options to make sure their ballots were cast and counted. But Kari Lake’s allies and the chair of the Arizona Republican Party told voters not to use them.

Ms Lake essentially said she would not accept the results of an election she lost and suggested her opponents would have to “cheat even harder in order to win this”. Just as Trump spent months undermining the electoral process before his defeat and ongoing attempt to overturn the results, Ms Lake is now appropriating allegations of voter suppression to bolster conspiracy theories about her loss.

“We are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week,” she said.

Less two days after Donald Trump announced his entry into the 2024 presidential race, Kari Lake was reportedly seen at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

The former president endorsed Ms Lake, who has dutifully embraced his false narrative of a stolen 2020 election, in a stop that birthed the “Stop the Steal” movement and was central to spurious audits fuelled by conspiracy theories after Joe Biden won the state.

Ms Lake has endorsed his 2024 run.

Arizona’s Republican Party chair Kelli Ward faces calls to step down after high-profile midterm election losses, including Senate candidate Blake Masters and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

Democratic candidates saw historic success; the state will be represented by a Democratic governor and secretary of state, with two Democratic Senators in Congress, defeating far-right candidates who rejected the 2020 presidential election outcome and promoted baseless claims about the electoral process.

“Conservatism wins in Arizona. Crazy does not,” according to Chris Baker, a Republican political consultant who works on congressional and legislative races in Arizona and elsewhere.

“The Republican Party in Arizona is at a crossroads right now,” he told the Arizona Mirror. “Is this the direction we want to continue in?”

Her decision to pursue her legal options after her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race has fractured Republicans who want to move away from rampant so-called election denialism while its true believers continue to reject the outcomes of races they have lose.

“Kari Lake has lost the race in my opinion. There’s no way for her to have a pathway,” former Governor Jan Brewer told The New York Times this week. “If I was in that position, I probably would concede. Our democracy is so important to what our country and state stands for. We vote people in and we vote people out.”

Members of Turning Point USA, the far-right activist group that has backed Ms Lake’s campaign, have appeared skeptical about what comes next for the candidate.

During a broadcast this week, far-right state lawmaker Wendy Rogers told Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk “we wonder now if we were in echo chamber.”

“I don’t know. I’m just beginning to get some perspective.”