Yet as the 1960 gubernatorial election approached, Lake initially announced that he would not be a candidate for governor due to a lack of funds. The entry of the state's moderate attorney-general, Malcolm Seawell into the race, along with the start of the lunch-counter demonstrations in Greensboro caused Lake to change his mind, and he announced his candidacy for the office. In one advertisement, he wrote "The mixing of our two great races in the classroom and then in the home is not inevitable and is not to be tolerated.". Lake made segregation the dominant issue of his campaign, attacking Hodges's management of integration and the NAACP. With Robert Burren Morgan acting as his Campaign Manager, Lake did well enough to place second in the Democratic primary to Terry Sanford, but in the subsequent runoff election, Sanford defeated Lake by a margin of 50,000 votes.