15 Jan 18th–Jan 24th, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | court rulings against her challenges. Now this Trump-loving wrecking ball has set her sights on the 2024 U.S. Senate race. If Sen. Kyrsten Sinema seeks re-election as an Independent, as many suspect she will, Lake may actually have a shot at a plurality in a three-way match-up featuring U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego as the Democratic nominee. Lake’s superpower is that she can spew insanity with a Telegenic smile, whether she’s insisting that Trump was “the real winner of Arizona” in 2020, calling for journalists to be locked up, defending the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, or claiming that an unspecified group of “evil people” pushing a “globalist agenda” have “unleashed viruses” and “tried to shut down the country.” In a recent interview with New Times, East Valley political savant Tyler Montague called Lake “a Turning Point product.” The organization helped bankroll Lake’s entry into the political realm, serving as a tireless booster of her candidacies. She is a symbol of the group’s triumph over the old Arizona GOP, which is why Lake has crowed that “We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.” Perhaps. But whether a Turning Point candidate like Lake can actually win a statewide contest in Arizona remains an open question. Howard Pyle Arizona’s ninth governor, John Howard Pyle, was considered a rising political star until the 1953 “Short Creek Raid” by state troopers on a polygamist sect that inhabited the region, now known as Colorado City. The polygamists were members of a fundamentalist Mormon group unaffiliated with and condemned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The group later became known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS. Motivated by good intentions, Pyle’s raid was seen as heavy-handed and harmful at the time. He ordered 100 law enforcement officers to descend on what he labeled a “state of insurrection.” Hundreds of men, women and children were rounded up and placed behind barbed wire. The plan was to prosecute the fathers and mothers, placing the children in foster homes, but after two years of legal wranglings, the families were reunited and back in Short Creek. Pyle had allowed carloads of journalists to document the round-up, but this back- fired on him. Photos of families being broken up were published nationwide, turning public sentiment against the raid. Pyle lost a 1954 re-election bid to former U.S. Senate Majority leader Ernest McFarland. He later lamented that “it was neither the time nor the place to do what we did.” Bobby Raymond In 1991, Arizona state Rep. Bobby Raymond became the unlikely face of a 13-month sting operation by then- Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley known as AzScam. The sting targeted state legislators, with ex-felon Joseph Stedino posing as mobster “Tony Vincent” and attempting to buy their votes for a bill to make casino gambling legal in Arizona. Encounters between Stedino and his prey were videotaped. Seven legislators were subsequently indicted along with more than a dozen others. Among them was Raymond, who took $12,105 from Stedino and spent two years in prison as a result. Ironically, Raymond, a Democrat, came to office as a white hat, winning his first term by defeating then incumbent state legislator and later disgraced Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks. Raymond reportedly championed sane HIV legislation with the support of LGBTQ+ people in Phoenix. But it is this quote from Raymond, uttered during a chit-chat with Stedino, which everyone recalls whenever AzScam is mentioned: “I don’t give a fuck about issues. There’s not an issue in this world I give a shit about… I do deals… My favorite line is, `What’s in it for me?’” Former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) r Arizona Gov. oward Pyle.