‘Trump in a dress’ sues over election defeat
KARI LAKE, the defeated Republican candidate who became known as “Trump in a dress”, is suing state elections officials over her loss in the midterm election and asking to be declared the winner.
The suit targets Ms Lake’s opponent, Katie Hobbs, the governor-elect, who is Arizona’s secretary of state, along with senior officials in Maricopa county, according to the filing on Friday with the Maricopa county superior court.
Ms Lake was one of the most highprofile Republican hopefuls in the midterms polls to embrace Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.
Some compared her to the former president, something she welcomed, often saying: “You can call me Trump in a dress any day.”
The suit on Friday asks for an order declaring that Ms Lake is the winner of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, or alternatively throwing out the results and requiring the state’s Maricopa county to conduct a new election. In November, Trump-backed Ms Lake lost the governor’s race to Democrat Ms Hobbs. She refused to concede and made unconfirmed claims about election improprieties on her Twitter feed.
Ms Lake, a 53-year-old former television news anchor, was one of a string of Trump-aligned Republican candidates who lost battleground state races in the midterm elections.
During her campaign, Ms Lake promised to ban the state’s mail-in voting, which conspiracy theorists falsely claimed was vulnerable to fraud, fuelling distrust among voters about the safety of a voting method used by hundreds of thousands of Americans.