- Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey blasted GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over her 2020 election claims.
- Lake, who is backed by Trump, has continued to contend that the presidential election was stolen.
- Ducey has endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson, a lawyer and former member of the Arizona Board of Regents.
Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey on Sunday slammed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for her repeated claims that the the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," the two-term governor said that Lake — who is backed by former President Donald Trump — was being dishonest with voters and said her allegations about the election were an "act."
"Kari Lake is misleading voters with no evidence," he said. "She's been tagged by her opponents with a nickname, 'Fake Lake,' which seems to be sticking and actually doing some damage. Karrin Taylor Robson started from zero and now this is a margin-of-error race."
Ducey, who is term-limited and cannot seek reelection this year, has diverged from Trump and endorsed one of Lake's GOP primary challengers, Karrin Taylor Robson, a lawyer and former member of the Arizona Board of Regents.
The governor called Robinson "the real conservative" in the Republican contest and praised her for having "pro-gun" and "pro-life" positions.
"I think Karrin Taylor Robson will be the best person to be a fresh new leader for the state of Arizona," he said during the interview. "Her opponent, on the other hand, bears no resemblance — her campaign or even her personal interactions with me — to anything she's done over the past 30 years."
"This is all an act. She's been putting on a show for some time now, and we'll see if the voters of Arizona buy it," he added.
In the 2020 presidential election, which saw now-President Joe Biden narrowly win Arizona over Trump, Ducey rejected the former president's entreaties to block the certification of the election results.
Lake, who was formerly a television journalist, rose to prominence in the Republican race as a candidate who embraced Trump's election claims, even without verifiable evidence of mass fraud.
An audit of the results from Maricopa County, Ariz., conducted by the firm Cyber Ninjas last year reaffirmed that Biden carried the state's largest county.