Lake the loser comes home to Iowa testing her prospects

Iowa’s second most-famous expatriate loser, Kari Lake, has a scheduled homecoming when she meets Friday with the Scott County Republican Women.

One blanches at the mention of her in the same reference as President Herbert Hoover, who by most accounts was a nice guy and did a world of good after he lost. North Scott High graduate Lake grabbed the nation’s attention with a campaign of nastiness and deceit trying to become governor of Arizona.

Lake narrowly lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, and of course unlike Hoover sued over the results (where she lost again in court) after having declared that she would only accept an election tally that found her the winner. She held fast to the lie that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden. And she said that reporters should be thrown in jail — this from a former TV news anchor who cut her teeth in the Quad Cities market after graduating from the University of Iowa.

Lake is a certain sort of nasty that comes from somewhere. She has friends and supporters back home, according to the North Scott Press. She probably has more advocates than detractors around Eldridge. Her politics are very much in line with Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the two leading Republican presidential contenders, and with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

DeSantis and Reynolds are winners. That’s the difference. Lake and Reynolds wrap themselves in the same policy agenda, whether it’s immigration or African American studies, that drives GOP politics. Reynolds lacks the in-your-face style Lake used to get her to the top of the TV news business prime-time Phoenix.

Lake is charismatic, attractive and versed in the art of sound-byte rhetorical combat.

You do not travel from Arizona to Bettendorf in February because you like the weather here. Iowa remains first in the Republican presidential nominating process.

Nikki Haley is preparing her travel plans to the Tall Corn State. Former Vice President Mike Pence probably will start showing up more. Mike Pompeo will come calling purporting to be from Kansas. Others will make forays looking for an opening as Trump and DeSantis trade punches. It’s a little curious that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem can almost see Sioux City from her front porch, but she hasn’t made a pest of herself there yet.

At this time last cycle, there were 25 Democrats stopping by to say howdy. John Delaney, Julian Castro and Elizabeth Warren all campaigned in Storm Lake by January.

The seers say that a large field favors Trump as he hangs on to a solid third of his base, maybe higher than that in Iowa. If you look at what the Iowa Legislature is up to, DeSantis will find broad support among conservatives here. There is a meanness and anger Trump and DeSantis know how to tap. So does Lake.

You have to be skeptical in this environment how someone like Haley will do. She ordered the Confederate flag to be drawn down from the South Carolina capitol, after all. Wait til Trump accuses her of being “woke.” Pence positions himself as the candidate of integrity and religious fortitude, but the MAGA base was out to hang him — literally.

Lake has allied herself at times with Trump and DeSantis. It’s hard for them to attack her. How will she play back home against them, if that is what is she up to? (Lake also is considering a Senate run in Arizona.)

Sen. Joni Ernst has proven successful by steering her hog toward the center while claiming to make the swampers squeal. Sen. Chuck Grassley won again not by being an overt jerk but by playing the cagey old farmer, which he is. Reynolds, the understudy of the longest-serving governor in US history, Terry Branstad, is no dummy. Reynolds panders to the base by banning “divisive” thinking in schools and handing out private-school vouchers and promising to ban abortion. She manages to come off as the nice lady next door who thinks we’re doing just great so long as we keep the queers in their place. The Democratic money was scared to take her on. Iowa Nice, even if it is a veneer for a policy agenda that is cruel in many ways, still sells well in Scott and Buena Vista counties.

Lake is someone to watch. She is tough and scary. She will find support back home for her brand of politics built around contempt, no doubt. But the only way she can overcome the tag of loser — the biggest loser of the midterm elections, you could argue, along with Trump — is to deny that our institutions are valid and that the elections are true, or that your vote counts. Voters just turned back that notion nationwide last November, but not necessarily in Iowa. Is there room for Kari Lake here?

And, does she create room for someone like Kim Reynolds, who actually is a proven and repeated winner with a solid facade of Iowa Nice? This could be an interesting caucus cycle. Does Lake have enough snark to overcome being a discredited former TV face who is a loser? Sort of like Trump?

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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