Arizona GOP chair quits after offering Lake bribe
PHOENIX — Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff Dewit resigned Wednesday after he could be heard in a leaked recording offering a job and asking U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake to name a price that would keep her out of politics.
Dewit’s departure shakes up the Republican Party in a battleground state that will feature prominently in the battle for control of the White House and the U.S. Senate in the November election.
At the time of the recording last March, Lake was waging an unsuccessful court fight challenging her loss in the 2022 race for Arizona governor and gearing up for a U.S. Senate campaign. Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington were talking openly about plans to seek GOP Senate nominees who would be more viable in general elections.
“There are very powerful people that want to keep you out,” Dewit tells Lake in what he described as a “selectively edited” recording. “But they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is in a big way.”
He did not say who asked him to approach Lake but said they were “back East.” He asks her repeatedly not to tell anyone about the conversation.
“Is there a number at which—” Dewit asks at one point, before
Lake interjects: “I can be bought?”
In a statement announcing his resignation, Dewit said he had planned to fight to keep his job until Lake’s team gave him an ultimatum to resign or she would release another, more damaging recording.
He said he didn’t intend to bribe Lake but was offering candid advice for her to sit out the Senate race and run again for governor in 2028.
“I genuinely believed I was offering a helpful perspective to someone I considered a friend,” Dewit said.
Lake, a former television news anchor, has a penchant for weaponizing recordings of her confrontations.
Yet even as Lake delivered campaign-style talking points for an audience not in the room, Dewit did not seem to catch on that he was being recorded.
The recording, first published by the Daily Mail, was leaked days before former President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser for the Arizona GOP.