Former President Bill Clinton’s campaign stop in Arizona stirred plenty of conversation this week, as he gave a backhanded compliment to Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake while discussing the competitive Arizona races.
In an unexpected aside, Clinton described Lake as “physically attractive” but implied her politics are more performance than policy. Lake, known for her quick wit, wasted no time in firing back at a rally headlined by former President Donald Trump, quipping, “I thought I was a little too old for him. Doesn’t he like interns?”—a pointed reference to Clinton’s infamous scandal with Monica Lewinsky during his presidency.
Clinton’s commentary didn’t stop at Lake. He also assessed Vice President Kamala Harris’s vulnerability in the presidential race, pointing out that she faces intense GOP scrutiny, which he believes has left her “extremely vulnerable” with only a narrow band of undecided voters left in play.
According to Clinton, Harris’s fate in Arizona and other swing states may hinge on perceptions of President Biden, given the close association voters make between the two.
Clinton’s comments about Lake’s appearance and his comparison to Harris’s battle with Trump didn’t go unnoticed. Clinton likened Arizona’s Senate race between Lake and Rep. Ruben Gallego to the Harris-Trump face-off, describing it as “a beautiful microcosm of the campaign” and contrasting Gallego’s hard-won rise from difficult beginnings with what he characterized as Lake’s focus on style over substance.
However, Clinton stumbled slightly in his remarks, attempting to convey that Lake and others in her party show loyalty to Trump, but awkwardly phrasing it as needing to be “prostrate before the master.”
For Lake, the attention has only added to her platform, as she seized the moment to pivot back to core campaign issues like immigration and her criticism of Gallego as “radical.” And while Lake is trailing Gallego by six points in the latest polls, her campaign is banking on Arizona’s history of conservative leanings, with just two Democratic presidential victories in the last seven decades.
Clinton’s return to Arizona—where he has sparked controversy before, notably with his tarmac meeting in 2016 with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails—has drawn fresh attention to both the Senate race and the Harris-Trump standoff.
