Republican candidate Kari Lake announces her plans to run for the Arizona U.S. Senate seat during a rally, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected election denialist Kari Lake‘s last-gasp effort to become the governor of the Grand Canyon State — in brief but decisive fashion.
Without a word of reasoning or analysis, the state’s highest court declined to review the petition in the case stylized as Lake v. Hobbs — in a minutes list published Wednesday. This denial marks a capstone on the Republican’s long-running legal efforts to dispute her narrow 2022 electoral loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.
During the last midterm, Lake lost her gubernatorial bid by roughly 17,000 votes — yet she claims to be the “lawful governor” of Arizona.
Final pleadings came over the summer.
In her July petition, the former KSAZ news anchor alleged there was “new evidence” that Maricopa County improperly administered the election in question. The basis of Lake’s since-shuttered claim is that the county failed to conduct required “logic and accuracy” testing on its vote tabulators. The GOP’s argument relied on claims advanced by a so-called “cyber expert” who has advanced the similarly false claim that the 2020 general election was somehow not valid.
“Maricopa testified falsely and argued misleadingly about its violations of election law throughout this litigation,” the filing reads. “If Maricopa had properly conducted L & A testing as it falsely testified it had, the testing would have identified — and thus prevented — the 2022 Election Day chaos.”
Lake’s attorneys sought to resuscitate the long-shot case with even more far-fetched form of relief: by ordering a do-over election or by nullifying some 275,000 votes from Maricopa County and effectively declaring her to be the chief executive of the state.
Instead, the justices simply declined to consider Lake’s arguments at all.
The terse ruling reads, in full:
ORDERED: Petition for Review = DENIED.
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Decided to completely back down and concede’: Kari Lake’s ‘surrender’ in election official’s defamation suit means she won’t defend rigged 2022 election claims in court
Maricopa County’s attorneys filed their response in August — urging the court to reject the petition in particularly acrid terms.
“Rather than offering reasons why review should be granted, the Petition instead only argues that Lake is right and the lower courts are wrong,” the county’s filing reads.”The Petition makes this argument by simply parroting Lake’s position below while ignoring much of the legal reasoning and all of the evidence that led the lower courts to decide against her. And while Lake quietly—but correctly—abandons many of the factual misrepresentations that she placed before the trial court, the Petition continues with other misrepresentations which are contrary to the record and the trial court’s factual findings.”
Lake initially lost at the trial court level on Christmas Eve in 2022, when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson declared that Hobbs had won a “valid election.”
As to Lake’s central claim in her petition, Maricopa rejected those assertions entirely — stopping just short of calling her a liar — and argued they were completely irrelevant as well.
From the response, at length:
Lake first argues that Maricopa County misrepresented that it properly conducted logic and accuracy testing. This assertion is certifiably false, and literally so because the record contains certificates signed by representatives of the Secretary of State and Republican and Democrat observers stating that Maricopa County properly carried out logic and accuracy testing. Even if it were true, Lake never attempts to explain how the representations prevented her from presenting any evidence in support of her claims at the first trial.
As of Friday evening, Lake is locked in a fierce battle with Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who leads her by some 42,000 votes in what looks to be the last uncalled Senate race of the 2024 election.
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