'Practical Republicans' in Arizona sank Kari Lake because 'they want government to work': expert

A new report from the Arizona Republic sheds more light on the coalition of voters who sank Trump-backed Kari Lake's hope of becoming Arizona's next governor.

Essentially, the newspaper found that a significant number of Republican voters in the state crossed over to back Democrat Katie Hobbs in this year's elections, and they also helped put nails in the coffins of fellow MAGA candidates Blake Masters and Mark Finchem.

Chuck Coughlin, president and CEO of political consulting firm HighGround, explained to the Arizona Republic that many Republican voters in the state wanted more moderate conservatives such as the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) instead of bomb-throwing right-wingers like Lake.

"There are practical Republicans," he said. "They want government to work... They’re not part of this conspiratorial environment and partisan behavior."

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Fred Solop, a politics professor at Northern Arizona University, said that the results reflected the fact that Republicans nominated a slate of candidates who denied the results of an election in a state that President Joe Biden carried two years ago.

“When democracy was on the ballot, a significant number of Republicans were rejecting Republican candidates," he said.

Lake herself didn't help her cause when she trashed McCain publicly and told Republicans who had once voted for him that she no longer wanted their support.

"Everybody was down on the Hobbs campaign, how bad it was," said Coughlin. "The reality is the Lake campaign was worse. It actually told people not to vote for them."