Matt Salmon and Karrin Taylor Robson
Opinion: Unless Matt Salmon can envision Kari Lake as Arizona’s next governor, he should drop out of the governor’s race.
Laurie Roberts | Arizona Republic
In November 2021, support for Kari Lake stood at a solid 28% of likely Republican voters, according to polling by OH Predictive Insights.
Five months later, after multiple Trump shoutouts, a bazillion attacks on the media and increasingly dire warnings about alien “invaders” and a supposedly stolen election, support for Kari Lake stands at a solid 29% of likely Republican voters.
Lake may be the hope and the pride of the angry far right, but the rest of the party isn’t buying what she’s selling.
Various Republican political consultants have long predicted that Lake, with her caustic approach and a distinct lack of anything approaching a resume that would suggest she’s equipped to run a growing state, would have trouble broadening her appeal.
“She’s got a ceiling, and my sense is that it will ultimately end up somewhere in the 20s,” longtime Republican consultant Chris Baker told me in January.
Unfortunately, as the Arizona Agenda’s Rachel Leingang and Hank Stephenson pointed out on Wednesday, that ceiling could well be enough to deliver her the Republican nomination in a six-way race for governor.
Which is where Matt Salmon comes in.
