Arizona’s bombastic GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake doesn’t apologize for much.
She’s smiled her way through inflammatory remarks accusing Mexicans of being rapists, slammed the same media she was part of for 22 years as dishonest, and made numerous false allegations about election fraud.
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But on Wednesday, Lake’s campaign tried to walk back comments she made suggesting abortion should be legal.
The former local news anchor told a conservative Phoenix talk show on Tuesday that abortions should be “rare and legal” but apparently misspoke. What she really meant is they should be “rare and safe,” her spokesman Ross Trumble said.
“You know, it would be really wonderful if abortion was rare and legal — the way they said it before, remember?” Lake told KTAR radio host Mike Broomhead. “Rare but safe, rare but safe, I think is what they said. It’d be really wonderful if that’s how it turned out. But that’s not what they want, Mike. They don’t want rare but safe.”
Abortion has been a hot-button topic in Arizona — and one Lake has campaigned on. Last month, an Arizona judge ruled that an 1864 law that bans abortion unless medically necessary to save the mother’s life could be enforced. The state legislature also passed a bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks. The move created uncertainty about what is actually allowed under Arizona law.
Lake and her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs are virtually tied at 49% with less than five weeks to go until Election Day, according to a new CBS News Battleground Tracker poll.
That same poll found that 6 in 10 registered Arizona voters said abortion should be legal in most cases.
Lake said she has always been anti-abortion.
“I’ve never backed away from that and never will,” she said. “The Democrats have tried to politicize the issue in such a disturbing way.”
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Hobbs, the current secretary of state, has vowed to “use every tool at my disposal to restore abortion rights in Arizona.”
