Kari Lake
Kari Lake Halperin is an American political figure and former television news anchor who has served as the senior advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media since March 2025 and deputy CEO and acting CEO of USAGM since July 2025, under President Donald Trump. She was the unsuccessful Republican Party nominee in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and in the 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona.
Beginning her media career in the early 1990s, Lake was the anchor for the Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV from 1999 to 2021. She stepped down from her anchor role shortly before announcing her gubernatorial candidacy, winning the Republican nomination with the endorsement of former president Trump. Her campaign was marked by various controversies, including promoting false claims of Trump winning the 2020 presidential election and calling for the imprisonment of those who accepted Trump's defeat, including her Democratic opponent, Arizona secretary of state Katie Hobbs. Lake narrowly lost the election to Hobbs in what was the closest gubernatorial race that year, but refused to concede. Her lawsuit challenging the results lasted nearly two years and was rejected by Arizona state courts.
In October 2023, Lake announced her candidacy for the 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona. She won the Republican nomination in July 2024, but lost the general election to Ruben Gallego. In December 2024, then President-elect Trump announced that he wanted Lake to be appointed as the next director of Voice of America, although the position is not legally appointed or nominated by the president. Lake was sworn in as a special advisor to the USAGM, which is the agency that oversees the Voice of America, on March 3, 2025.
Early life and education
Kari Lake was born in 1969, in Rock Island, Illinois, to Larry and Sheila Lake, who were natives of the Wisconsin communities of Richland and Appleton. Larry taught social studies and was a basketball and football coach at North Scott High School, while Sheila was a nurse. Kari is the youngest of nine children.Lake grew up in Iowa. She graduated from North Scott Senior High School in Eldridge, Iowa, and then received a BA in communications and journalism from the University of Iowa.
Media career
In May 1991, Lake began working as an intern at KWQC-TV in Davenport, Iowa, while attending the University of Iowa. She later became production assistant before joining WHBF-TV in Rock Island to be a daily reporter and weekend weathercaster in 1992. In August 1994, Lake was hired by KPNX in Phoenix, Arizona, to be the weekend weather anchor; her sister was working in Phoenix at the time, and her parents had retired there. She later became evening anchor at KPNX before relocating to work for WNYT in Albany, New York in the summer of 1998 when she replaced Chris Kapostasy.Lake returned to Arizona in 1999 and became an evening anchor for KSAZ-TV. While at KSAZ, Lake interviewed President Barack Obama in 2016 and President Donald Trump in 2020.
In her last years working in the media, Lake shared false and unverified information on social media, prompting criticism and acquiring a reputation as a provocateur. In 2018, she opposed the Red for Ed movement, which sought more funding for education through strikes and protests, claiming that movement was a "big push to legalize pot"; she later apologized for the statement and, according to the station's regional human resources director, subsequently took an unexpected month-long leave from her position at the station. In July 2019, Lake was caught on "hot mic" footage promoting her account on the web platform Parler. She shared COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter and Facebook in April 2020. Lake's statements and actions made her a divisive figure among colleagues in her last years at the station.
In March 2021, she announced her departure from KSAZ, one day after FTVLive, a television news industry website, published a video clip of Lake at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida; the website questioned whether Lake was there as a journalist or as a member of a movement. In June 2021, she announced her campaign for governor.
Political career
Party switches
Lake was a member of the Republican Party until November 3, 2006, when she changed her registration to become an independent. She registered as a Democrat on January 4, 2008, the day after the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses were won by Obama. Lake returned to being a Republican on January 31, 2012. She explained leaving the Republican Party in 2006 as a reaction to the then-ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She had supported John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. She also made several donations to Democratic presidential candidates. After launching her campaign for governor in 2021, Lake cited Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward, all former Democrats, as precedent for her party-switching.2022 gubernatorial run
Lake filed paperwork in June 2021 to seek the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona in the 2022 election to succeed incumbent governor Doug Ducey, who was term-limited. Four candidates sought the Republican nomination: Lake; former real estate developer and Arizona Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson; Paola Tulliani Zen, and Scott Neely. Lake and Robson were the front-runners, leading in polling and fundraising. A fifth Republican candidate, ex-congressman Matt Salmon, dropped out of the race after trailing in polls and endorsed Robson.Throughout her campaign, Lake was described as "a champion of the far-right" movement in the United States. Lake received Donald Trump's endorsement in September 2021. The primary was seen as a "battle" between Republicans aligned with Trump and establishment Republicans. Robson was supported by figures such as former Vice President Mike Pence, governor Ducey, and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. By the end of 2021, Lake had raised $1.4 million from 12,000 sources. Lake centered her campaign on promoting the false claim that the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and nationwide was "rigged and stolen"; Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House aide who promoted Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, attributed her victory in the Republican primary, despite being "outspent 10-to-1," to that stance. Lake won the Republican primary in Arizona on August 2, 2022, winning in all counties.
After winning the Republican primary, Lake said that "we're all big boys and big girls", urging people to "come together"; however, within a week of that victory, Lake said: "We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine". Later in early November, Lake participated in a campaign event where she told "McCain Republicans" to "get the hell out!" Lake also called the traditional Republican Party "the party of McCain", and then stated: "Boy, Arizona has delivered some losers, haven't they?" Her statements were in contrast to her past description of John McCain four years earlier, after his death, as "courageous", "a war hero, icon and a force to be reckoned with".
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs refused to debate Lake during the election. However, both attended a gubernatorial candidate forum in September 2022, held by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where they separately answered questions.
On November 7, 2022, Lake's campaign stated that on November 6, a campaign staffer "opened an envelope delivered to our campaign office that contained suspicious white powder. It was one of two envelopes that were confiscated by law enforcement" for testing. On November 11, the Phoenix Police Department said that the Arizona state laboratory had tested the items turned over to them by Lake's campaign, and found "no substance" inside. After this revelation, Lake's campaign stated that there actually had been three envelopes, with the first envelope being opened by the staffer having "a white powdery substance along with a hateful letter", but that the staffer threw the first envelope away, and that the trash was emptied before police were informed, with police being handed the other two envelopes.
COVID-19
In August 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lake led anti-mask rallies, calling on Arizona State University students to go against the university's mask mandates. Lake said that as governor she would not tolerate mask and vaccine mandates. In November 2021, Lake told a group of Republican retirees that she was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 infection. She stated that, as governor, she would work to have hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin produced in the state to "make it easier for us to get these lifesaving drugs". Lake questioned the science behind COVID-19 vaccines and said that she had not been vaccinated.Stolen 2020 election claims
Lake had been a leading proponent of the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from Trump. During her campaign, she aligned herself with Trump and centered her candidacy on promoting election lies.Lake claimed President Joe Biden did not receive 81 million votes and that Arizona was actually won by Trump. After the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit found no evidence of election fraud, she demanded the election be "decertified"a legal impossibility, as such a process does not exist. Lake tweeted quotes made by Sidney Powell on Lou Dobbs Tonight falsely asserting there was a sweeping election fraud conspiracy. She has advocated imprisoning Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, her Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, on baseless and unspecified allegations of criminality related to the 2020 election. Lake also called for imprisoning journalists. Lake repeatedly claimed that defendants arrested in connection with the January 6 United States Capitol attack were "being held in prison without being charged".
Trump endorsed Lake's candidacy, as did pro-Trump Republican figures such as Arizona congressman Paul Gosar and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. By contrast, Lake's main primary opponent, Robson, was endorsed by outgoing Republican governor Doug Ducey, as well as Arizona Senate president Karen Fann and Americans for Prosperity. Lake attacked Robson for failing to endorse false claims of election fraud. Lake attended events headed by My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims regarding fraud in the 2020 election. During her 2021 campaign for governor, she said that she would not have certified Biden's 2020 election victory in Arizona if she had been governor at the time. During a June 2022 debate among candidates for the Republican nomination, Lake continued to make baseless claims the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" and "corrupt".
Fox News reported in July 2022 that nine days before the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump, Lake had posted a meme on Facebook that declared the inauguration a "national day of mourning and protest", in which she asked her followers how they would react to Trump's inauguration. She asked "Will you be protesting the inauguration?" and how they might protest. The post was deleted after Fox News asked Lake's campaign about it.
In February 2023, Lake said: "We've got great candidates on the Republican Party and on our side. We've got so many great candidates that if our elections were really fair, I believe the ranks of Congress, the Senate, I think a White House, I think all the state governorships would be Republican if elections were fair".