Kari Lake focuses on election denialism, immigration concerns at Cave Creek rally

Senate candidate Kari Lake urged hundreds of supporters in Cave Creek Thursday to vote in Arizona's upcoming elections even as she suggested without evidence that the outcome would be illegitimate.

“Here in Arizona … we count (votes) for two weeks, or however long it takes to get the results that they want,” Lake said. “So we've got to vote in the system we're in, and that means we're going to send in our early ballots, we're going to vote on Election Day. We are going to do everything we can.”

She vowed retribution against unnamed forces she claimed are corrupting U.S. elections: "I want to root out the cheaters and I want them to be locked up.”

And she echoed the recent words of her close ally, former President Donald Trump, that her supporters will mobilize to make Republicans’ November margin of victory “too big to rig.”

Discredited theories about U.S. elections and concerns over illegal immigration were the throughlines of Lake's nearly hourlong address on Thursday night. Though some of the claims she made have been virtually conclusively disproven, her views are shared by a passionate portion of the GOP electorate.

She emphasized familiar arguments that her likely Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and President Joe Biden have not done enough to curb a recent spike in illegal border crossings.

Historically a progressive voice on immigration, Gallego has adopted tougher and more urgent rhetoric on the topic as he seeks statewide office. Lake described Gallego as “a guy who has spent the entirety of his political career prying our border open.”

Reached for comment, Hannah Goss, a spokesperson for Gallego’s campaign, wrote: “There has been a crisis along our southern border for years, which is why Ruben supported the bipartisan immigration compromise bill and has long supported hiring and deploying thousands more border patrol agents. Kari Lake did not.”

“If she is interested in fixing our border crisis, then why is she playing political games instead of working toward solutions?”

Toward the end of her speech, Lake invited onstage Josephine Dunn, an Arizona mother whose daughter died from fentanyl poisoning.

Border issues: Most fentanyl is smuggled by US citizens, not migrants, and seized at legal ports of entry.

Fentanyl is a potent and cheap synthetic opioid and a major contributor to overdose deaths in the United States. Drug-trafficking outfits in Mexico make the pills in labs using chemicals primarily brought over from China.

Dunn, who has previously said Biden’s border policies are “partially responsible” for her daughter’s death, recounted pulling Lake aside in a parking lot one day to share her story. Lake listened to her for half an hour, Dunn said.

“This woman, before she was running for office, she gave me her time, the gift of her time, in a parking lot,” Dunn said of Lake, choking back tears. “I’m here today supporting her in her campaign for Senate, but, hell, I'll support her if she's going to be the president, the vice president.”

Lake, other speakers nod to 'Great Replacement Theory'

Lake also echoed previous rhetoric that flirts with the "Great Replacement Theory," an idea first popular among white nationalists that elites are deliberately engineering a replacement of the native-born population with immigrants.

“They can't win with their terrible, destructive policies,” Lake said. “They have to have people pour across our country and vote. That's the only way they can win: with illegals voting.”

Immigration-caused demographic changes have often helped the Democratic Party at the ballot box, but dozens of failed legal challenges have not surfaced evidence to back up the claims of widespread fraud in U.S. elections, including the claim that undocumented immigrants are voting in elections in large numbers.

Allusions to the “Great Replacement Theory” are featured in the other speakers’ remarks. State Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, who helped introduce Lake onstage, said that Biden wants to “import future voters” and “rig the census” by continuing the practice of counting undocumented immigrants.

Abe Hamadeh, the former candidate for Attorney General who is now running for Congress, said in foreboding remarks that illegal immigration into the U.S. is being “done intentionally.”

“We have to understand what these radical leftist Marxists are doing to our country. It’s all intentional,” Hamadeh said.

In a pointed contrast, Hamadeh praised Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, the fiery self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who has proposed sweeping free-market reforms, and El Salvador’s popular but authoritarian president Nayib Bukele, who has cracked down on gangs through sometimes politically repressive tactics.

“People are waking up, not just here in America,” Hamadeh said.

State Rep. Justin Heap, R-Mesa, also spoke at the event to promote his political campaign against Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. Richer is suing Lake for defamation over claims she made in the wake of her unsuccessful 2022 run for governor.

The Arizona Republic’s Rafael Carranza contributed reporting.

Laura Gersony covers national politics for the Arizona Republic. Contact her at lgersony@gannett.com or 480-372-0389. 

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake, GOP Senate candidate, rallies supporters in Cave Creek