When Kari Lake speaks to the Republican Party faithful, she’s accustomed to cheers and adulation.
But as the Arizona Senate candidate addressed hundreds of the state GOP’s most loyal activists late last month, she was booed so loudly the sound carried through a cavernous megachurch’s auditorium into the lobby.
It was an unfamiliar greeting for Lake, an outspoken election denier and former local television anchor who just a year ago was welcomed rapturouslyby the same Donald Trump-supporting crowd.
Yet it was an indication of the mistrust that’s developed within the Arizona GOP after Lake and her allies appeared to have turned a favorite hardball tactic — taping conversations and then leaking them publicly — against one of the party’s own.
The booing followed by days the release of a secret recording made of her conversation last year with Jeff DeWit, then the state party chair. During their discussion, DeWit said that important people did not want Laketo run for Senate and wondered if she would think about instead going on a corporate payroll. Lake told him that she would not “be bought” and publicly cast the offer as evidence of bribery.