Comment Carrie Lake, who was expected to lose her race for Arizona governor on Monday, traveled to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida on Thursday, according to two people with knowledge of the activity. One of the people said he received a standing ovation when he entered a luncheon at the club hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded last year by Trump allies and former members of his administration. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private events. The think tank is holding a “Gala and Experience” at Trump’s club on Thursday and Friday. An agenda says the goal of the event is to “ensure that policies are prepared and finalized for new congressional and statehouse sessions.” Lake has not conceded defeat. The visit to Mar-a-Lago, while vote counting continues in Arizona, signals that she is already taking steps to keep her profile in the former president’s orbit. Her support could also prove consistent for Trump, who launched his 2024 presidential campaign this week under fire for his role in the party’s lackluster performance in the midterm elections. Lake, a former television news anchor, modeled her gubernatorial bid on Trump’s campaigns and echoed his false claims that he was cheated out of his 2020 re-election bid. She speaks regularly with the former president, according to current and former campaign advisers. The former president called into her campaign “war room” on Sunday to express her disbelief that Republicans are behind in the vote count and to express her support for her and other GOP candidates. Lake was expected to lose the race Monday to Democrat Katie Hobbs, the current secretary of state. On Tuesday, Lake responded to Trump’s announcement of a third run for the White House, tweeting that she had her “full and complete support!” Lake has often been discussed as a possible vice presidential pick for Trump, although she maintained on the campaign trail that she intended to serve a full term as governor if elected. Now defeated for state office, her political path is less clear. On Thursday, she told supporters on social media that “we’re still in this fight,” suing Maricopa County, the seat of Phoenix and more than half of the state’s voters, for problems on Election Day involving printer malfunctions. In the early hours of Election Day, printers at 70 of the county’s 223 polling places produced ballots with ink that was too light for vote-counting machines to read. This caused the ballots to be rejected by the machines. Voters were told to either wait in line, travel to another polling location or deposit their ballots in secure boxes that were transported to downtown Phoenix and counted there. County officials sent technicians to fix the settings on the printers that were experiencing the problems. While technicians were out at other polling locations, they also changed settings on the printers as a precaution, a county spokesman said. County officials plan to investigate the root cause of the printer problems in the coming weeks. Lake and her allies have characterized the problems as “voter suppression,” an issue that could become central to GOP legal efforts in statewide races. But county officials have repeatedly said no one was disenfranchised and noted several instances of Republicans spreading misinformation about the use of secure boxes on Election Day, despite the fact that such boxes have been used for years. Her campaign also released a series of video testimonials from voters who claim they were denied the chance to vote. They included a link to a fundraising page for Lake’s campaign. A judge rejected a Republican request to extend voting hours on Election Day because of the problems, finding that no one had been prevented from voting. Lake’s campaign is weighing its legal options in coordination with Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican attorney general nominee who is trailing his Democratic challenger but whose race has not yet been declared, according to people familiar with the discussions.
