Politics
NEW: Kari Lake Breaks Mar-A-Lago Fundraising Record With Massive Haul
The wins keep piling up for Kari Lake, who on Tuesday announced a record-setting number of donations that arrived as a result of her recent fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.
Campaign sources, speaking with ABC News, confirmed that the Arizona Republican U.S. Senate candidate had a very good night Wednesday, stockpiling more than $1 million with an event that set the venue’s record for the most funds raised by a non-incumbent candidate.
Tickets for the event started at $1,000 per person and went for as much as $100,000 per couple, which included a two-night stay at Mar-a-Lago and a post-event dinner with Lake.
Compared to her peers, Lake is in a class above. For example, Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who won his primary last month, raked in $350,000 with a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser, according to Axios.
Lake, a former news anchor, arrived on the national scene after narrowly losing the 2022 governor’s race against then-candidate Katie Hobbs. Lake contested the result for months with President Trump’s backing, ultimately losing her numerous court appeals and moving on.
In her second chapter, Lake leads the Republican field and perhaps even convinced Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), a former Democrat, not to seek re-election. Her expected opponent is Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), whom she has pilloried for his soft-on-immigration stance and failure to support Republican proposals for enhancing security along the state’s southern border. A February poll showed her with a 3-to-1 lead over Gallego, according to the Western Journal.
Previous cash-on-hand totals show Lake raising $2.1 million since launching her campaign in October, according to the FEC. Rep. Gallego carried $3.3 million at the end of 2023 and announced his campaign had raised $4.74 million in the first quarter of 2024.
Lake’s event comes on the heels of a separate Washington, D.C.-area fundraiser set up for Lake by the Republican National Committee which netted the spitfire conservative another $350,000, according to POLITICO, after she secured the endorsement of GOP Senate fundraising chief Steve Daines.
