Kari Lake to be featured speaker at CPAC dinner

Kari Lake, the defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate, will be the featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC) high-profile Ronald Reagan Dinner next month, the gathering’s organizers announced on Thursday.

It’s a high-profile gig for a conservative firebrand who has repeatedly refused to concede her loss to Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs in last year’s election. In a statement announcing Lake as the dinner’s featured speaker, a spokesperson for CPAC praised her as “a rare leader who captured the hearts of conservatives with her honest, bold message including closing the Arizona border and exposing widespread election fraud.”

“Kari has been a breath of fresh air into conservative politics,” Megan Powers Small, CPAC’s spokesperson, said. “She has an uncanny ability to tell it like it is [that] has given a voice to the silent majority in Arizona and across the country, and we can’t wait to have her liven up our CPAC stage at the Ronald Reagan Dinner.”

After her November loss to Hobbs, Lake challenged the election results in court, arguing that problems with ballot printers at some polling places were the result of intentional misconduct and interference. 

That challenge was shot down by a judge, but Lake hasn’t exited the spotlight. She’s considering a Senate bid in 2024, when Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), a Democrat-turned-Independent, will go up for reelection. She’s also set to travel to Iowa this weekend to meet with state GOP leaders. 

Her planned appearance at CPAC’s Ronald Reagan Dinner gives her another key platform to court conservatives and assert herself as a national Republican leader. The four-day gathering is also expected to feature prominent speakers like former President Trump, who is once again seeking the GOP’s presidential nomination.

CPAC is set to take place in National Harbor, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C., from March 1-4.