More than 370 candidates for office across the nation were election deniers during the 2022 campaign, according to a New York Times analysis. None of them campaigned with more poise and passion than Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona. After all, Lake is a veteran TV news anchor who had spent more than two decades delivering the news at Fox 10 Phoenix . “People have said Kari Lake is ‘Donald Trump in heels,’ but really she is Donald Trump with media training and polish,” proclaimed The Washington Post, while Politico, marveling at her campaigning skill, declared, “Lake has basically had more than 20 years of media training, and it shows.”
Though she narrowly lost a squeaker of a race that was not called until six days after Election Day, Lake did earn 49.7% of the vote, convincing more than 1.25 million Arizonians to cast their ballots for her. As a political novice, she nearly won the most powerful position in the state. This would not have been possible if Lake were not such a skilled, dynamic, and confident speaker who knows how to connect with her audience.
Sadly, she chose to run on an anti-Democracy platform, copying Donald Trump’s in-your-face attack politics, and using the worst shock tactics of local TV news to generate attention. Not only did she embrace “the big lie”, but she called for imprisonment of her opponent Katie Hobbs, the Secretary of State who had certified Arizona’s electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020. She went far beyond simply applauding President Trump to echo the very worst of his offensive racist messages, claiming immigrants are rapists, criminals and drug smugglers. She even picked fights with reporters who covered her campaign in attempts to expose them as biased and unethical, a continuation of Trump’s assault on the news media designed to delegitimize journalists.
Lake’s run for office shows the power of media training to build telegenic excellence. These skills can be highly dangerous when they are used for demagoguery, power grabs, and self-promotion at any cost.
But when media and speaking skills are used to inspire colleagues, convey valuable information, and promote charitable causes, as they should be, they can be a powerful force for good, and a great asset for any leader in the political, corporate, or not-for-profit worlds.