Kari Lake's Confederate flag flap silences party rival GOP

Few public signs have emerged that U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake or her prominent supporters have second thoughts about her recent campaign under a Confederate battle flag.

Days after the Republican front-runner announced he did so at a campaign event in Show Low, neither the Arizona Republican Party nor the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee had any immediate comment Monday.

Lake’s Republican Senate rival, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, also declined to comment on the flag incident.

In contrast, Rep. Ruben Gallego, the only Democrat vying to succeed retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., condemned Lake’s appearance with the flag, saying it is “emblematic of who she is: source of divisive, dangerous, and unfit to serve in the United States Senate.

“I served this country in the Marines and swore to uphold the values of freedom, equality and democracy that we hold dear, that we fought and died for – not for the failure of the Confederation.

“This is who Kari is: a power-hungry politician who will do or say anything to obtain power,” Gallego said in a written statement from his campaign.

Use of Confederate flag will alienate moderates, some Latinos say, experts say

While the incident appears unlikely to shake his support in Republican circles, it may not help him expand his appeal to the less partisan, political experts said.

“She’s operating in an alternate universe,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.

“In recent years, people have come to realize that the Confederacy was an act of treason and that flying the Confederate battle flag was effectively tantamount to endorsing treason,” he said. “Among his core supporters, it probably won’t make any difference. But that won’t help her get rid of the moderate independent voters she needs to beat Gallego.”

Lisa Sanchez, an assistant professor of government at the University of Arizona, said the issue could hurt Lake with some Latinos.

“Research suggests that Latinos tend to react more negatively to the Confederate flag than non-Latino whites,” she wrote to The Republic. “Like Black Americans, Latinos generally react negatively to the Confederate flag, but it lacks the lived historical salience that it has for Black people. Latinos who are not politically active or engaged may not see a strong connection between their ethnicity and the Confederate flag.

“However, Democrats will likely take the opportunity to link Republicans, including Kari Lake, to the oppression and anti-Latino sentiment that the Confederate flag has come (more generally) to represent in recent years through its association with the white nationalist flag.

Chandler James, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon, has studied norm-breaking behavior in the Trump era. He said the Confederate flag may not matter to all of Lake’s supporters, but it signals to them that she is willing to move her policies in the direction they want.

“It’s a deliberate strategic choice,” James said. “For many of his supporters, the violation of the norm itself, having a Confederate flag, may not mean a lot to them personally. Many of them may not care if someone uses the Confederate flag. But if he owns the libraries, if he upsets the right people, that is the value. When you do something that causes controversy among those you don’t want to like…it can be a really good way to show that you’re not part of the establishment.

Steven White, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse University who has researched racial politics, said the incident appears to reflect its polarizing nature.

“As a candidate, she’s not someone who really made an effort to go to the center. She’s really more tied to the Trump style of right-wing politics,” he said. “I feel like that kind of thing maybe helps him appeal to a certain portion of the base, but doesn’t. is probably not ideal for influential voters.

“I suspect it probably hurts him with this kind of stereotypical, college-educated, white suburbanite who was a Republican and has now switched to the Democratic Party. …Given current levels of polarization, most voters have already chosen sides, so to speak. This sort of thing might have seemed more shocking 10 years ago.

Opinions on the Confederate flag divide politicians

In the past, the Confederate flag often appeared around the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina. This state has flown the flag on its Capitol grounds for years. The state flew the battle flag on its Capitol or adjacent grounds from the Civil War centennial in 1961 until 2015, following a massacre at a Charleston church targeting black people.

When U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, ran for president in the 2008 cycle, he told CNN, “That’s not a flag I recognize.” Frankly, this flag is divisive and should not be flown.”

John McCain, the Republican who won the Republican Party nomination that year, was hesitant on the issue during his 2000 presidential campaign due to political considerations.

McCain initially called the flag a “symbol of racism.” He later called it a “symbol of heritage”. After losing the nomination in 2000 to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, McCain apologized.

“I feared that if I answered honestly, I wouldn’t be able to win the South Carolina primary,” McCain said in April 2000. “So I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth.

Today, McCain, who died in 2018, and Romney, who is retiring from the Senate, are often decried by Trump supporters as embodying the political failure of the Republican Party.

Lake mocked McCain during his 2022 gubernatorial run, and in a radio interview earlier this year, she tried to dismiss his criticism of him as a joke. This only reignited a public spat with McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain.

Likewise, the video of Lake speaking under a Confederate flag garnered national media attention and only adds to Lake’s long record of controversies.

In a video obtained by The Arizona Republic, Lake appears at Show Low’s Trumped Store on May 31 and discusses his concerns about election administration to a room full of supporters. She was campaigning with store owner Steve Slaton, a Republican candidate for the Legislature whose military background has become a source of controversy.

Speaking with a microphone, Lake is seen turning to those behind her, easily bringing the flag into view.

“Kari Lake went to a store”

Kari Lake’s Confederate flag flap silences party rival GOP

Lake’s campaign on Friday did not express regret for the incident or distance itself from the Confederate cause.

“Kari Lake went to a store. The campaign does not own the store,” his campaign said in a statement to The Arizona Republic.

The campaign told British news agency The Guardian, which first reported it, that the campaign “does not respond to British propaganda media.” We stopped doing that in 1776.”

The store Lake visited is named after former President Donald Trump and sells a line of Trump-themed items.

Lake, like Trump and others like Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., downplayed the criminal behavior of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the 2020 election.

In December, she told Fox News, those imprisoned for their roles were “political prisoners.”

“It’s terrible what happened,” she said. “To me, this is one of the greatest injustices in American history.”

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Lake’s visit has already generated controversy for Slaton, who claimed in an April radio interview with Payson’s KMOG that he was a Vietnam War veteran.

“I was a combat veteran in Vietnam for four months supporting the missions of the South Vietnamese and patrolling along the DMZ,” he said.