Kari Lake isn’t giving up. Even as she prepares to mount a campaign for U.S. senator, and more than two months after her opponent was sworn in as Arizona’s governor, she insists that she won the governor’s race and that the election was stolen.
Election denial has become one of the pillars of the modern GOP — but the desert soil of Arizona soaks up such hallucinatory claims like rain, at least partly because of the state’s unique history. Through most of the last century and a half, Arizona has been a geography of personal reinvention, ambitious schemes and glowing hype that exceeded nature’s limits. The name itself is derived from a 1736 silver rush in a valley near a ranch called “Arizona” that flamed out just weeks after it began. Lake’s false crusade has already lasted longer.
What’s in the water in Arizona that inspires such obvious flimflammery?
