By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Within a day an elected Republican governor and a possibly elected one from opposite sides of the nation both announced their big plans to shake up the country.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made it official that he’s in the GOP presidential race on May 24. One day earlier, Arizona’s Kari Lake, who says bold cheating deprived her of the governor’s chair here last November, told of her plans to be “at the tip of the spear” for election integrity around the nation.
Although DeSantis strongly was re-elected as the assertively conservative governor of the diverse Sunshine State only last November, he had been under considerable pressure to get into the 2024 presidential race to snatch the GOP nomination away from the already-announced candidate and 45th President Donald Trump, who has entrenched foes.
Lake surprised some people on May 23 when she dismissed the idea of entering Arizona’s U.S. Senate race for 2024 after a Superior Court judge again declined to recognize evidence that she’d been cheated in 2022. She said she remained determined to stand up for ordinary people in Arizona and around the nation.
At an outdoors news conference lasting nearly an hour, Lake said, “We’re gonna turn this around, then we’re gonna turn every other state where they’re rigging elections around.”
The Wanderer asked two of its sources for their opinions of DeSantis running. Shortly before he confirmed his candidacy on May 24, northern California commentator Barbara Simpson said, “That DeSantis is in the race against Trump is nothing but good. It will force each candidate to campaign on their best points and finally give voters a CHOICE!”
The day before the strongly pro-life DeSantis made it official, Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs the Virginia-based Catholic blog Les Femmes — the Truth, took a different view, saying that conservative governors are needed in the states.
Kreitzer said: “I hope he doesn’t run. We need good, strong governors to push back against the federal government. If the rumor that he plans to ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders to be his running mate [is true], that would be a double whammy to the red states. I hope he stays in Florida, continues to be courageous and defends parents who are trying to protect their children from the gender insanity.
“These governors could do the country a great blessing by uniting and forming a governors’ association to stand strong for a godly America,” Kreitzer said. “Personally, I think that’s our only hope. Presidents are surrounded by a bureaucracy that’s dug in for generations.
“Reagan promised to shut down the Department of Education. He didn’t and probably couldn’t,” she said. “What can DeSantis do to gut a weaponized DOJ, FBI, and CIA? Not much. Stay in Florida and fight for freedom at the state level. And leave Sanders in Arkansas!”
One hopes that DeSantis doesn’t end up being a sacrificial lamb to anti-Trumpers’ opposition to that president. For whatever polls are worth at this early date, they show billionaire developer Trump, who often achieved conservative goals while governing the entire nation, opening up a lead over DeSantis, who conceivably could end up weakened as just one state’s governor.
Trump plays hard and for keeps. That’s energy better spent against left-wing Democrats than a prominent conservative of his own party. Trump’s campaign has been blasting out dozens of emails ripping DeSantis. Within about three hours on DeSantis’ announcement day, my inbox received 13 Trump emails slashing DeSantis.
On Twitter, “DC Draino” said on May 24: “This is honestly so bizarre, to listen to DeSantis’ announcement. Trump made you governor. Trump is crushing the polls. WHY would you enter this race now and divide the GOP?!”
However, DeSantis hardly is the only other Republican in the presidential race, although he is reckoned as the most popular behind Trump. Already announced as of May 24 were Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, and Tim Scott, with others weighing an entry, including Mike Pence, Glenn Youngkin, and Kristi Noem.
DeSantis’ presidential website says that U.S. decline isn’t inevitable, but sanity, normalcy, and integrity must be restored. He says, “I am running for president of the United States because I want to lead Our Great American Comeback. Our country is going in the wrong direction. We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.”
On May 24 the Just the News website said that DeSantis “is poised to make generational change a centerpiece of his White House bid. ‘The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant future. We must look forward, not backwards,’ he declared.”
A New York Post story said, “DeSantis said last week he feels he has a much better chance than Trump of winning the election, and that ‘When we say we’re going to do something, we do it, and get it done’.”
At Lake’s Phoenix news conference on May 23, the veteran TV news anchor said she intended to appeal her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
After a tightly restricted two-day trial last December, on Christmas Eve Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson refused to recognize her evidence. The state Court of Appeals affirmed his opinion, but in March the Arizona Supreme Court sent one count of Lake’s case back to Thompson for renewed consideration.\
However, after a three-day May trial, he quickly ruled against her again on May 22 on the issue of the county’s failure to count the votes properly.
During national conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s May 23 livestreamed radio program, Kirk, a Phoenix-area resident, said the problem for Lake is that the other side just floods the system with mail-in ballots that aren’t verified.
Noting Arizona’s key swing-state role in 2020’s presidential election and presumably in 2024, Kirk pointed to untrustworthy activists supposedly verifying votes in Maricopa County’s election process but actually just pressing the button quickly time and again to give votes to Biden.
At her news conference, Lake was firm and determined to continue with her own case and the rights of voters around the nation.
Lake began by noting speculation that she was there to announce a race for the U.S. Senate. “Well, um, not today,” she said, adding that she had the “strongest election case in the entire country” with her 2022 race for governor. “. . . We proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that our elections are a mess. . . . The good people of Arizona have been disenfranchised. . . . We’re the laughingstock of elections here in Arizona.”
However, “it will not deter me, not at all,” Lake said. “The system is corrupt from top to bottom,” with no proper chain of custody of ballots.
Referring to the voting problems she was exposing, Lake said, “They want to call it a hiccup. It’s like projectile vomiting.”
Lake said Thompson’s court decision wasn’t what she hoped for, but she wasn’t shocked at all. “What they’re doing is so wrong to the people of this state….We did everything right. The people showed up in droves to vote, only to have their sacred vote trampled upon.”
She said she has been working nonstop to launch the largest “ballot-chasing” operation in Arizona, and maybe in U.S. history, to make sure that everyone gets a ballot and gets it returned.
“The courts just ruled that this corrupt election was fair,” Lake said. “. . . The courts have ruled that anything goes. Well, we can play by those same rules, okay?. . .
“We will not allow them to steal another election from we the people. We want our government back,” she said, asserting that there are people sitting in Arizona government offices today “who are not duly elected.”
Lake said she openly answers reporters’ questions, while Katie Hobbs actually runs from reporters.
Left-wing pro-abortion radical Democrat Hobbs, who supposedly narrowly defeated Lake last November after staying in her basement, refused to debate any and all gubernatorial opponents and kept quiet as much as she could.
However, Hobbs has gone on a veto spree against Arizona’s Republican-majority legislature unlike anything ever seen in the Grand Canyon State’s history.
The previous “veto queen,” also a left-wing Democrat facing a majority-Republican legislature, was Janet Napolitano, who set a record for casting 58 vetoes during the entire legislative session of 2005.
However, Hobbs was headed for 100 vetoes while the current session of the legislature continued. She vetoed popular bipartisan bills and bills for election integrity as well as pro-life, pro-mother legislation and bills popular with the Republican side.
On May 19 Phoenix television Channels 3 and 5 reported that in less than six months in office, Hobbs was getting close to the number of vetoes cast by some governors during their entire terms in office.
“Former Republican Gov. Jane Dee Hull served from 1997 to 2003. She vetoed 88 bills during her whole term,” Channels 3 and 5 reported.
They added: “Among the bills [Hobbs] vetoed on Friday [May 19] were election-related measures, including HB 2305, which would have allowed representatives from both political parties to observe each stage of the signature verification process for early ballots. Hobbs said in her veto letter that it would create ‘unnecessary burdens’ for election officials and raises too many privacy concerns.
“Hobbs also rejected HB 2308, which would have forced the secretary of state to recuse themselves from election duties during an election they are running,” the TV report said.
In fact, Hobbs was the incumbent secretary of state in 2022, supervising her own election race against Lake. When Lake’s campaign had asked Hobbs in June of 2021 to recuse herself from this role, Hobbs refused.
Gila Monsters
Lake told the May 23 news conference that there are “millions of dollars committed” to the “ballot-chasing” operation she announced, and “thousands of volunteers who are dedicated” to helping. “We’re going to show up to a knife fight with a gun, not a knife, okay?”
The plans are to register to vote “every man, woman, child, dog, saguaro, Gila monster,” Lake exaggerated, citing some Arizona desert denizens and drawing laughter. “I’m being facetious. I’m sure that’ll be a headline. . . .
“We’re not stopping with one judge in Mesa [Thompson] who has ruled against us time and time again,” Lake said. “We’re going to keep going. And we know that the people of this great state want me to stay in this fight.”
Some people in state government offices “know they’re frauds. They absolutely know they’re frauds, and we all do,” she said.
Lake said that on Election Day 2022 in Maricopa County, 75 percent voted “to put America first,” but 60 percent of the polling locations weren’t working. “We cannot trust Maricopa County to give our voters a fair chance. We can’t trust the buffoons running our elections in Maricopa County anymore, so we cannot leave any vote on the table.”
She named Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer, both of whom supervised voting, as men who openly scorned “America first” candidates and raised money against them for the Pro-Democracy Republicans of Arizona PAC.
Being personally involved in a partisan PAC while also overseeing elections was an eyebrow-raiser, but it didn’t appear to trouble the establishment that agreed with its goals.
On the morning of May 23, the Kari Lake War Room tweeted that Judge Thompson “said that the statute merely requires the county recorder to be satisfied with the signature review. Since Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, an election-fraud denier who started a PAC for other GOP election-fraud deniers, was fine with the signature-review process, Thompson said that was all that mattered.”
Get Involved
Meanwhile, radio news reported that the toughies at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office were seeking sanctions against Lake and her attorneys for having dared to pursue their case.
On May 24 KTAR Radio news (92.3 FM) aired County Recorder Richer saying, “These people need to suffer consequences for these continued lies and these continued attacks at important institutions.”
In other words, for daring to displease the establishment’s Richer and his fellow corruptocrats.
At her news conference, Lake announced that Merissa Hamilton, a former Phoenix mayoral candidate and defender of ballot integrity, would head the “ballot-chasing” project.
Hamilton told the conference that wherever she has travelled around the nation, everyone asked how to do what the people in Arizona are doing.
Taking questions from reporters, Lake said that her case included evidence of roughly 300,000 ballots each “approved in less than three seconds” for signature verification, even though it takes one second just to get the image up on the computer screen.
She said an expert witness testified this was impossible to do accurately.
One video of two Maricopa County signature verifiers, seated side by side, showed one of them rapidly clicking along to approve 62 signatures while the person on the right in the same time period verified only eight.
Lake said her team also discovered there were an additional 99 people authorized to do signature verification behind closed doors, at their offices, or even at home sitting in their underwear on the sofa.
She said the letters she receives from some people concerned about their own elections “move me to tears.”
Lake recommended the websites savearizonafund.com and karilake.com.
She said she wasn’t asking for donations when people find it hard enough to afford to put food on the table due to Joe Biden. Instead, “I’m asking for people to get involved.”
Instead of worrying over “really negative, nasty” media stories about her, Lake said, “I care about what God thinks about me.”
In an article posted May 23 at the Arizona Sun Times website, reporter Rachel Alexander, who also is an attorney, picked apart Thompson’s rushed decision. Here is a portion: “Thompson asserted that Lake had to prove that election boards’ misconduct affected the outcome of the election, citing Miller v. Picacho Elementary School District No. 33. However, that case did not state that a showing of misconduct was required.
“Instead,” Alexander wrote, “the Arizona Supreme Court looked at the violations of the statutes on their face to invalidate the election. ‘We therefore hold that a showing of fraud is not a necessary condition to invalidate absentee balloting,’ the court stated. ‘It is sufficient that an express non-technical statute was violated, and ballots cast in violation of the statute affected the election.’
“Thompson next claimed that Lake relied on the case Reyes v. Cuming as a ‘purposeful concession’ because she wouldn’t be able to ‘cast doubt on a specific number of ballots’,” Alexander said. “However, Lake named specific numbers of ballots in her case that she cast doubt on.
“For example, her legal team showed through an expert how the signatures on 274,000 ballots were reviewed in less than two seconds each. Although the defense had advance notice of the expert, they provided no expert to refute his testimony,” she said.
Proof Is Needed
On the other hand, Arizona-based GOP political consultant Constantin Querard warned on May 23 against assuming that a rapid signature verifier wasn’t doing his job properly.
“As far as how long it takes to verify a signature, I think someone who does it a lot is going to be very fast. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of signatures match,” Querard told The Wanderer. “The vast majority of people who vote by mail sign their own envelopes with a signature that is largely unchanged from whenever they registered. There will be a small number of people who have suffered a stroke or broken a wrist or had some sort of an issue that alters their signature, but most signatures match.
“Which means when you see the signature from the envelope on screen next to the exemplar from the file, you will be looking at two very similar signatures, and you will mark them as a match,” he said. “It is not unreasonable that this process might only take a second or two seconds or three seconds, where you pause and take a longer look at the occasional signature that seems different or is different.
“The point that the judge will make is that the process is not in the law, the process is left up to the people who run the elections, so it makes no difference what you or I think of the process, so long as there is a process and so long as that process occur,” Querard said.
“Do you or I really want judges to start writing the rules for things? No, on the contrary, we have spent years campaigning against the idea of activist judges. We just want them to read the law and apply it as written, and that is what this judge did,” he said. “Or did I miss something?”
Querard added later in the day that “if we’re in court, how I ‘feel’ about how long I ‘think’ the job should take to do right has no significance. The law as written has no such instructions or minimums. I need to be able to PROVE that they didn’t do their job, and that’s a much higher standard.”
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