PHOENIX — Both former President Donald Trump and Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake have repeatedly pushed false claims that their lost elections were stolen from them. But for some Arizona voters, only Trump’s election denialism is resonating.
For John Giza, 66, a retired Walmart employee from Show Low, the idea that Trump lost the presidential election in 2020 is unfathomable. “I believe there was a great deal of rule changes because of Covid that allowed multiple duplicate voters and people who are not eligible,” Giza said outside a Trump rally in Prescott Valley on Oct. 13, parroting Trump’s debunked claims.
But when it comes to Lake’s failed bid for governor in 2022, when she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, Giza believes that election was legitimate. “I fought election fraud all my life. I don’t think she did” win, said Giza, who plans to vote for Lake.
Asked why he believes the 2022 governor’s race was legitimate but not the 2020 election, Giza said, “They had already started working on the issues with people voting who weren’t supposed to vote.”
In interviews with NBC News over the last few months, some Arizona voters who believe the 2020 election was rigged said they think Lake’s 2022 loss was legitimate.
Karen Miller, 54, a nurse from Scottsdale, was asked about Lake in October 2023 on the day Lake announced her bid for the Senate. Miller said she believed the 2020 election was “shady at best.”
Still, when she was asked about Lake’s 2022 bid for governor, Miller, a registered Republican, said she isn’t convinced by Lake’s conspiracy theory. “At this point, it makes her lose credibility to keep on spending time, money and energy on it,” Miller said. “It’s not going to change at this point. And if she were to recognize that, then she would probably gain a lot more support.”
At a Trump rally in June, Brendan Dolleman, of Scottsdale, said “there were definitely issues” with the 2020 election. “In 2020, it was a Covid year. We had many states outside of Arizona going to mail-in voting for the first time.” But in 2022, he said, “I don’t know about those issues.”
At the time, Lake had yet to clinch the GOP Senate primary against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. Dolleman had been hoping Lamb, not Lake, would be the Republican nominee this cycle.
“I think Mark Lamb is a candidate that independents are going to flow to,” he said, adding, “I think when we use the term ‘rigged,’ it turns off a lot of independents. We need to reach out to independents to win the election.”
Lake is in a battle with Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego to claim independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s soon-to-be-vacated seat. Almost every poll in the race shows Lake behind Gallego. In contrast, Trump has repeatedly outpolled Vice President Kamala Harris in the state, though by much slimmer margins within the margin of error.
In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996. As the votes were being counted, hundreds of pro-Trump protesters, some armed, gathered outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix in the days after the election, arguing without evidence that the election was being stolen from Trump.
Trump’s refusal to accept the result sowed seeds of doubt in Arizona, a state rife with election denialism conspiracy theories in recent years. A Fox News poll in late August found 32% of Arizona voters surveyed didn’t believe Biden was legitimately elected president. Among Republicans, it was 62%.
Taylor Hammond, 30, a real estate agent from Phoenix, doesn’t believe Trump lost in 2020. “The ballot, what were the counters called?” she wondered at the Oct. 13 Trump rally. “Dominion,” she recalled.
Hammond was referring to baseless conspiracy theories that Dominion Voting Systems machines, which were used in several states, rigged the 2020 presidential election. Last year, Fox News and Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement after the network allowed the debunked conspiracy theories about the company’s voting machines to proliferate on the air.
But when she was asked whether Lake lost her 2022 bid for governor fair and square, Hammond said Lake got “carried away” and became “a little too conspiracy theory”-minded. “She spent too much time at Mar-a-Lago and not focusing on Arizona,” Hammond added, though she said she is supporting Lake’s Senate bid.
Her husband, Tyler Hammond, said that he’s supporting Lake but that “she talked a lot of stuff that I feel like she should have just shut her mouth on honestly, and I think it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”
Lake refused to concede and failed in multiple lawsuits to overturn the results. Her claims in the wake of her loss landed her in a defamation lawsuit brought by Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer that could compound her political woes with financial woes.
The Lake campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about why some of Trump’s supporters don’t believe she won the governor’s race.
To this day, Lake refuses to concede her 2022 race for governor. In an interview with CNN on Monday evening, she was repeatedly asked whether she lost two years ago. At every instance, she deflected. “Why are we looking backward? I’m looking forward,” she said. Asked again, she said, “I’m actually thinking you meant to ask me about the issues that people cared about, and people care about our wide-open border.”
During her 2022 campaign, Lake disparaged the patriarchal figure of Arizona Republican politics, the late Sen. John McCain. Supporters of McCain are identified by the unofficial title in Arizona of “McCain Republicans,” a powerful sect in the state’s party. Speaking at a campaign event in Tucson in 2022, Lake said: “We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we? Get the hell out!”
Lake also said McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, “wants an end to America.”
Neil Rubin, 64, a grocery store worker from Peoria, said that he has concerns about the 2020 election but that the 2022 election was legitimate. Asked why Lake lost, Rubin said, “Quite honestly, I think what happened is the McCain Republicans in Arizona hate Donald Trump so much that they sat on the sidelines.” Despite Rubin’s reservations about Lake’s election denialism, he still plans to vote for her.
But for other voters, Lake’s false claims about her election loss resonated.
Dana Morrison-Miller, of Phoenix, told NBC News at a Trump rally in June that Hobbs, the Democratic governor, is illegitimate. “I do believe that there was election fraud in ’22,” Morrison-Miller said. “I don’t believe Katie Hobbs is our rightful governor. All of this has to be uncovered.”
And Sally Foree, 66, a Realtor from Ahwatukee, said Hobbs “absolutely stole that election.”
Barrett Marson, a Republican political consultant based in Phoenix, wasn’t surprised that some of Trump’s supporters aren’t buying Lake’s bogus claims.
“Donald Trump elicits deep, emotional bonds with his voters, and Kari Lake is a bit more of a flash in the pan,” Marson said. “Donald Trump is a singular political force that cannot be duplicated by his minions or acolytes.”
He added, “There’s never been anyone like him, and he elicits such devotion from his fans that they believe everything that he says, from immigrants eating cats and dogs to election denialism.”
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