Senate candidate Kari Lake tries to win over moderate Republicans

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - In an effort to mend fences with moderate Republicans, U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake met recently with a former political rival she tried to characterize as a gold digger during last year’s GOP primary for governor.

The meeting comes as polls suggest Lake is at risk of losing her second statewide run for office unless she can win over the kind of Republican voters who rejected her brand of politics in 2022.

A spokesman for Lake’s campaign and sources close to Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost last year’s GOP primary, confirmed the meeting happened about two weeks ago but did not reveal any other details.

Republican consultants, like Barrett Marson, said Lake has a lot of work to do if she wants to win over moderate Republicans like Taylor Robson and others. “Lake has said some god awful things about ... moderate republicans, even independent voters who leaned to the right,” Marson said.

Over the past two years, Lake, a former local news anchor, has routinely attacked members of the GOP who did not back former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda.

Last year, Lake narrowly lost her run for governor to Katie Hobbs after pushing away traditional conservatives, whom she called RINOs, which is short for Republicans in name only.

Shortly after winning the 2022 Republican primary, Lake bragged that her campaign “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”

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