PHOENIX — This winter, Kari Lake was facing a daunting reality: The voters who rejected her in her 2022 run for governor could now jeopardize her entire political future. If Lake — “Trump in heels,” as she has referred to herself — didn’t begin to quickly change the minds of those she had shunned or ridiculed, she could lose, again, in her 2024 Senate bid.
“I have never thought of myself as divisive. But it’s not enough for ME to believe that. I need to prove it,” Lake wrote in a social media post in December, acknowledging the need to step away from her tendencies to make incendiary comments, like when she gleefully declared that she had driven “a stake through the heart of the McCain machine” — referring to Sen. John McCain, the popular Arizona Republican who died in 2018 — and broaden her appeal.
But with just over seven months until the election, several key Arizona Republicans tell NBC News that they believe Lake’s campaign is facing an increasingly uphill battle.
“What I hear is, everybody has just resigned themselves that we’re going to be stuck with a Ruben Gallego — that’s what I hear from all the major players, the big-money people,” Shiree Verdone, a longtime GOP fundraiser in Arizona, said, referring to Lake’s Democratic Senate opponent. “I haven’t heard anyone say, ‘Kari Lake is going to win.’”
Verdone, who voted for Lake in 2022, served as Trump’s campaign finance chair in the state in 2016 and 2020 and was a campaign manager for McCain. She said that she will vote for Trump, again, in 2024 and that she believes Lake’s best hope is to ride his coattails.
But Verdone has shifted her own attention to races other than Lake’s Senate bid, even attending a fundraiser in the Phoenix area last week for a non-Arizona Republican Senate candidate — Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick.
“He’s a serious guy. I like what he’s talking about, and I think we all relate to it,” Verdone said. “With Kari, I…
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