How much was former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, plus 27 years as a television news anchor, worth to Kari Lake in her successful bid for the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona? Millions.
Lake bested wealthy businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson 47.9% to 43.2% in the Arizona GOP gubernatorial primary despite being outspent 18 to 1 on radio and broadcast and cable television. Lake spent just shy of $827,000 on the air, according to the most recently available figures, while Taylor Robson blanketed the airwaves with $15.3 million in campaign advertising. Lake also got clobbered by Taylor Robson on total spending, $18.4 million to $3.6 million.
“Kari Lake had so many built-in advantages over the rest of the field,” Barrett Marson, a Republican operative in Phoenix, said Wednesday. “I don’t think any amount of ground game, any amount of money, or any substantial policy differences could have stopped a Trump-backed media star.”
Marson, an ally of term-limited Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who endorsed Taylor Robson, supported former GOP Rep. Matt Salmon, who ended his gubernatorial campaign before the Aug. 2 primary. Some Republicans share Marson’s view, saying it’s easy to take shots at Taylor Robson’s campaign after the fact.
But other GOP operatives, particularly those worried Lake puts the party’s hold on the governor’s mansion in jeopardy in the midterm elections, complain Taylor Robson’s campaign was mismanaged. Lake is a vocal proponent of Trump’s unsupported stolen election claims, a position that could be problematic in Arizona, a bona fide swing state.
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The Taylor Robson advisers catching the most heat are Doug Goodyear, a Republican operative who works for government relations firm DCI Group and is a longtime Ducey associate, and Jon Seaton, a GOP strategist. Some of their Republican critics say something must have gone awry with their advertising strategy to come up short after outspending Lake by a whopping $14.4 million.
Other gripes were more specific.
“It was her campaign to lose after Matt Salmon dropped out, and she lost it,” a Republican insider in Arizona said. “There is always the balance of strong ads that get to millions of people — and the echo chamber that they hear … at the grassroots level. You had none of that with Karrin.”
“They had zero ground game,” this GOP insider added, saying Taylor Robson’s campaign paled in comparison to previous winning efforts from such Republicans as former Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain, each being elected several times between them. This Republican requested anonymity to speak candidly, as did other GOP critics of Taylor Robson’s campaign. Goodyear did not respond to an email requesting comment.
But Seaton, speaking to the Washington Examiner at length, said the criticisms were baseless.
To begin with, Seaton said the Taylor Robson field operation was robust. The campaign visited more than 150,000 homes, contacted more than 225,000 GOP primary voters, and deployed grassroots volunteers to dozens of events — rodeos, parades, and party gatherings. Seaton emphasized that Taylor Robson began her race with virtually zero name recognition, a problem given the peculiarities of this campaign.
Lake and Taylor Robson were both first-time candidates running for an open seat. But Seaton said Lake had the advantages of incumbency thanks to Trump’s endorsement and being near-universally known from her decades as a television news anchor in Phoenix’s dominant media market. With all those challenges in mind, Seaton said he was proud of Taylor Robson and the campaign she ran, notwithstanding she lost to Lake by 4.7 percentage points.
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“We needed to increase Karrin’s name ID from minimal to competitive and had very little time to do it. The only way to do that is spending money on television to tell her story; that’s a decision we made as a team,” Seaton said. “You never want to fall short. But she did a good job of introducing herself to voters, and they clearly liked what she had to say.”
Lake is facing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) in the general election.
