Senator Steve Daines has warned Kari Lake against dwelling on the past ahead of her Senate bid.
Lake will launch her campaign for the Senate seat held by independent Kyrsten Sinema with a rally on October 10, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. She will enter the Arizona race as a front-runner for the GOP nomination after her loss in last year’s race for governor.
Lake, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, has refused to acknowledge her loss to Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, despite courts repeatedly rejecting her lawsuits. She took a leaf out of Trump’s playbook by using claims of election fraud to fundraise and build support among Republicans.
But Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is devoted to electing Republicans to the Senate, said the disappointing showing in last year’s midterm elections shows voters aren’t interested in rehashing the past.
In 2022, voters widely ejected Trump-backed candidates in battleground states, including Arizona, who had promoted the former president’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
“I think one thing we’ve learned from 2022 is voters do not want to hear about grievances from the past,” Daines said in an interview with CNN.
“They want to hear about what you’re going to do for the future. And if our candidates stay on that message of looking down the highway versus the rearview mirror, I think they’ll be a lot more successful particularly in their appeal to independent voters, which usually decide elections.”
The Montana Republican praised Lake as “very gifted,” but said it’s “going to be important for her to look to the future and not so much the past.”
The Arizona race is a top target for Republicans looking to take control of the Senate, which Democrats currently hold with a 51-49 majority that includes Sinema, who left the Democratic Party last year after frustrating her Democratic colleagues with her opposition to their priorities.
Sinema hasn’t announced whether she will seek a second term in the Senate, and the only major Democrat in the race is Rep. Ruben Gallego. Republican Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County, is also in the race.
Lake has repeatedly hinted at a Senate run in recent social media posts.
“Arizona has two TERRIBLE options running for Senate right now,” Lake wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, last week.
In the post, she called Gallego “an unhinged Marxist” who “believes that border security is racist” and said that while Sinema claims to be an independent, she “votes with Biden more often than Bernie Sanders does.”
Lake added: “Arizonans want something different. They want a Senator who will put them first.”
Newsweek has contacted a spokesperson for Lake for comment via email.