Kari Lake Gets Booed by Republican Crowd for Leaked Audio of Top State Republican

Late in January, controversial Republican superstar Kari Lake took to the stage at an event packed with hundreds of Republicans. Instead of cheers, she was met with deafening boos, with audience members furious at the release of a recording in which she claims a top Republican attempted to blackmail her into not running.

The key players

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The recording, first published by the Daily Mail just days before the event at which Lake was booed, was a snippet of a private, in-person conversation between Lake and Jeff DeWit, who was the chair of the Arizona Republican Party at the time.

Explosive release

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In the recording, DeWit told Lake that “very powerful people” on the East Coast were opposed to her running for Senate. These mysterious, unnamed power brokers were apparently “willing to put their money where their mouth is in a big way,” DeWit said.

Guy interrupted

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DeWit began to ask Lake, “Is there a number at which—” before she interrupted with, “I can be bought?”

Lake’s view

Lake has admitted to making the recording, which is legal in Arizona. She argued that she had done so to protect herself, and claimed DeWit’s comments were evidence that Republicans were attempting to blackmail her into not running for Senate.

Public denial

Lake denied being responsible for the leak, claiming that “somebody who had access to” the recording, “who I know,” leaked the audio. However, Lake has repeatedly leaked recordings of private conversations in order to attack and embarrass people she perceives as her enemies.

Popular tactic

Republicans who supported Lake “previously celebrated her approach of taping her critics and releasing recordings,” Yvonne Wingett Sanchez of the Washington Post wrote on Tuesday, “especially when it meant trying to embarrass reporters or Democrats.”

Not so funny

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Now that the target was an influential member of the GOP, however, many of those same Republicans weren’t so amused. DeWit resigned as state party chair — a position Lake and Trump helped him to get — after the audio was published.

Outrage

“The release of our conversation by Lake,” DeWit said, “confirms a disturbing tendency to exploit private interactions for personal gain.” “Anybody that’s worked with her, and into the future, are going to wonder, ‘Is she recording me?’” the chair of an Arizona county Republican Committee told the Washington Post. “Those who were booing felt betrayed — that outside of politics or inside of politics, you just do not audiotape somebody for personal benefit.”

Rhetoric versus reality

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The county chair booed with the rest of the crowd when Lake took the stage. However, he told the Washington Post that he would still support her candidacy.

Loss of trust

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“I don’t trust her,” a lifelong Republican told the Washington Post. “It’s just a lot of drama,” the leading Democratic candidate in Arizona’s Senate race, Rep. Ruben Gallego, said on TV. “You know, Arizona needs none of that.”

Tight race

Gallego and Lake could be fighting a three-way battle for Arizona’s Senate seat against the incumbent, Kyrsten Sinema. While Sinema has not announced whether she will seek reelection, she made headlines in 2022 when she announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party, meaning she would have to run as an independent.

Failure

In 2022, Lake lost the gubernatorial race by roughly 17,000 votes. Following Trump’s lead, she repeatedly and baselessly claimed that the election had been fraudulent.

Legal flop

In December, a judge ruled that a Republican election official had provided enough evidence that Lake had made “false and defamatory statements” about him for his defamation case against her to move forward. Lake claimed without evidence that the official had added hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots to the count.

Rejected attempts

Lake’s multiple attempts to challenge the results of the 2022 election were thrown out by courts. According to the Washington Post, some Republicans are worried her extremism makes her a risky candidate for the crucial Senate race in a swing state.