Former television news anchor and Arizona gubernatorial candidate for the Republican Party Kari Lake took to Twitter (now rebranded as X) to comment on the recent decision by the Biden administration to reduce the period of eligibility for Hungarian citizens in the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) from two years to one.
Lake proclaimed that this was due to the Biden administration ‘weaponizing our visa waiver programme’ against Hungary, despite the fact that ‘Hungary is thriving as the rest of the world falls apart because their leadership & organizations like [the Center for Fundamental Rights, Alapjogokért Központ in Hungarian] prioritize its people over the needs of foreign nations’.
The official explanation of the US Embassy in Budapest was that they opted to reduce the ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) validity period for Hungarian citizens because of the simplified naturalisation procedure that granted Hungarian citizenship to about one million people between 2011 and 2020. However,
many, including Kari Lake now, see this act rather as an escalation of tensions between the Biden and the Orbán administration.
The Interior Ministry of Hungary called the unprecedented measure ‘revenge’ as soon as it was announced, implying that it was put in place because the Hungarian government refused to share with the US government the personal data of Hungarian dual citizens living in Transcarpathia, Ukraine and Vojvodina, Serbia.
In addition, the US also terminated its double taxation avoidance agreement with Hungary, which had been in place since 1979. Back in April US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, who is also an avid critic of PM Orbán’s government, announced sanctions against the Budapest-based International Investment Bank (IIB). Also, back in June, an arms deal worth $735 million was blocked by a Republican senator in the US Congress as retaliation for Hungary failing to approve Sweden’s NATO accession.
Kari Lake, who was endorsed by Former President Donald Trump in the party’s primary, ran for Governor of Arizona as a Republican in the 2022 midterm elections. She ended up narrowly losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs, falling short by fewer than 20,000 votes in a race that was highly questionable in terms of election integrity according to many observers.
The Current State of the Republican Party in the State of Arizona
Failing to hold onto the Arizona governorship was undoubtedly a disappointment for the Republican Party last year, especially given the fact that they also lost the senators' race by an even wider margin (Democrat Mark Kelly beat Blake Masters by around 125,000 votes).
However, soon after the underwhelming midterms, Republicans in The Grand Canyon State got a lucky break. The state’s other incumbent senator, Kyrsten Sinema, announced she is leaving the Democratic Party and will be an independent. This has little practical effect on US politics now, as she still caucuses and votes with her Democrat colleagues most of the time (just like two other independent senators, Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Angus King from Maine, who are still counted in the Democrat's 51-seat majority in the chamber). However, it will certainly have an impact in 2024, as she will be making that year’s AZ senate election a 3-way race, splitting the liberal vote in the state. This gives conservatives a good opportunity to pick up a seat in the US Senate. Also, a recent poll by Emerson, a reputable, non-partisan polling firm,
puts Donald Trump ahead of incumbent Joe Biden in the state of Arizona by two percentage points.
President Trump won the state in 2016 (by 3.5 points, 90,000 votes), then narrowly lost it to Joe Biden in 2020 (by just 0.3 points, 11,000 votes). Arizona retained its 11 electoral votes after the reapportionment following the 2020 census, so it remains an important battleground state with a razor-thin race expected there.
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