I’ve been hitting the refresh button on the computer every 15 minutes or so since Tuesday, following the U.S. Senate race between my congressman Ruben Gallego and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Most of you know that Lake screamed voter fraud over and over after her 2022 loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs; she filed at least three losing lawsuits, all the while claiming she was Governor, and just this week the Arizona Supreme Court knocked down another Lake petition.
It’s finally over.
After two years filled with losses and appeals, the Arizona Supreme Court has denied Kari Lake’s final petition in a court case aimed at overturning the results of the 2022 race for governor.
It appears Lake will have time, then, to formalize her challenge to this year’s election loss, because I don’t think too many people believe she’s going to concede gracefully, graciously, or in any dignified way. Heading into the election Democrat Ruben Gallego was consistently holding a 3 percent lead and, indeed, that seems to be the way things will shake out. Lake is being pure Lake: While Ruben told reporters he’s watching returns and will abide by the voters’ decision, Lake lashed out at Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican whose defamation lawsuit against her is moving forward. She refused to defend herself in the defamation case, all but admitting she lied about Richer monkeying with the 2022 election, and the only thing left is for a judge to determine how much Lake owes Richer. But after her false allegations against Richer made his life a living hell (death threats to him and his family), he said he wanted to make her life hell too, so that’ll be her evidence of fraud this time—the Maricopa County Recorder was biased against her. Rightwing news outlets are already making that charge. Other MAGA nutters are claiming fraud, convinced there is no way Trump could win Arizona but Lake loses.
“So you’re trying to tell me that people voted for Trump then turned around and voted for Ruben Gallego and other Democrats at the state level?” wrote Josh Barnett, a hard right Republican who lost his state Senate race in the July primary. “There’s no f---ing way that happened. I’m not buying it.”
Hey nutjob, Arizona passed abortion protections and elected Trump too. I got nervous a day or two after the election when rural votes started to pour in, the headlines shouted that Lake had cut Ruben’s lead to about 1 percent, and it was clear Trump would win Arizona, but since Saturday more votes from Maricopa and Pima counties (that’s Phoenix and Tucson) have dribbled in, and with every new report Gallego’s lead grows—now at 1.6 1.7 2.2 percent. Ruben holds a commanding 60-40 lead in Pima (Go Tucson!) and about 52-46 in Maricopa, so while some rural counties like Cochise, Yuma, and Yavapai still have thousands of votes to count, it does not appear there are enough remaining GOP-heavy districts for Lake to make up for the roughly 300,000 ballots still to be tallied in Maricopa and Pima.
As I write on Sunday about 2PM, Gallego has a 48,000 vote lead with over 400,000 ballots to count, and most of them are in Maricopa and Pima. Lake would need to get over 55 percent of the remaining votes in mostly Democratic counties to win. Not gonna happen! I’ll be tuned to the TV tonight to watch Kari Lake gracefully concede. There’s always a first time!
UPDATE: Three hours later, Ruben Gallego’s lead has increased from 48,000 to 53,000, meaning that Lake would need 57 percent of the remaining votes. Yippee!!
UPDATE 2: With more than 92 percent of the vote in, Ruben has increased his lead to 69,000 votes and Democrat-heavy Pima County (Tucson/Univ. of Arizona) has only reported 84 percent of its ballots. THIS RACE IS OVER! MY DECISION DESK CALLS IT!
UPDATE 3: The race was finally called for Gallego on Monday evening!
Ruben Gallego, a child of immigrants who found his way to Harvard, Iraq and Congress, was projected to defeat Republican Kari Lake on Monday night and in January will become Arizona’s first Latino U.S. senator.
The Associated Press, NBC and CNN called Gallego’s victory Monday after another batch of Democratic-heavy votes from Maricopa County confirmed Lake could not plausibly overtake him, handing her consecutive high-profile statewide losses.
