Photos by Greg Nash-Pool | Getty Images, Gage Skidmore (modified) | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego’s lead over his opponent Kari Lake in the contest for one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats shrunk Thursday, as more results slowly trickled in.
After Maricopa County, where 60% of the state’s voters live, released more results at around 7 p.m. Gallego, a Democrat, led Republican Lake by only 1.7 percentage points and 43,698 votes, down from 2.5 percentage points and 52,578 after votes were tallied Wednesday.
Lake’s campaign team shared hopeful messages on the social media site X, formerly Twitter, urging supporters to cure any issues with their ballots so that their votes count and celebrating returns that leaned Republican.
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Maricopa County posted results from 72,100 additional ballots Thursday evening, pushing its total number already tabulated to more than 1.6 million. Those votes favored Lake at 57% to Gallego’s 41%. The county estimates that it has around 472,000 more ballots to count, and there are around 780,000 left to count across the state.
Even though Maricopa County’s counting process has taken an average of 13 days over the past 16 years, some of Lake’s fans baselessly speculated on X that the counting process was taking so long because Democrats were attempting to rig the election in Gallego’s favor.
Even though Lake lagged in polling throughout the Senate race, some of her fans could not believe that presumed president-elect Donald Trump had raked in over 128,000 more votes in Arizona than she did.
Lake and her followers have a long history of false allegations of election fraud, in 2022 when she lost the race for Arizona governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs and in 2020 when former President Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
Lake, a former Phoenix news anchor and Gallego, a former U.S. Marine who has represented the state’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House since 2015, launched aggressive campaigns against one another, trading personal barbs and accusations of extremism.
Gallego ran on a platform of making life more affordable for the middle and working class, reestablishing abortion rights and making measured increases in border security that would include increased manpower and better use of technology.
Gallego garnered support from some moderate Republicans who said they couldn’t support Lake and her vitriolic style, including Mesa Mayor John Giles and former staffers for the late U.S. Sen. John McCain.
Lake, a Trump devotee, made her campaign in his image, calling for completed construction of his border wall, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and an extension of his tax cuts.
Even as she ran for Senate, Lake continued to unsuccessfully challenge the results of the gubernatorial race in court, and two years later she still has not conceded the race. The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday denied her final appeal in the case.
Lake is also facing the prospect of paying yet-to-be determined damages to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, after she legally conceded fault in his defamation suit regarding Lake’s false claims that Richer helped rig the 2022 governor’s race against her.
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