Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, took an early lead in Tuesday’s election for the U.S. Senate over well-known former television news host and close Donald Trump ally Kari Lake.
Gallego leads Lake’s 50.4% of votes to 47.7% as of Wednesday morning with 60% of votes counted.
The race in a state with a recent history of close elections is among a handful of contests that will determine how big of a Republican majority Trump will have in the Senate when the president-elect returns to the White House next year.
The Republican Party won the Senate majority on Tuesday evening, regaining it from the Democrats who had held it for four years.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, took an early lead in Arizona
Kari Lake, a Trump supporter and former news anchor, on November 5
It is a test of the strength of the anti-Trump coalition that has driven the rise of Democrats in Arizona, which until 2016 was reliably Republican.
Arizona voters have rejected Trump and his favored candidates in every state election since. The presidential contest was too early to take place in Arizona after Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in most of the seven other battlegrounds.
Gallego led Lake in early returns, including a combination of mail-in ballots received and counted before Election Day and ballots cast in person Tuesday.
Gallego expressed confidence as he spoke to Democrats in Phoenix on Tuesday evening, although the race remained too early to start early on Wednesday with about a million ballots still to be counted.
“We had a mantra in this campaign: go everywhere and talk to everyone,” Gallego said. ‘And that’s exactly what we did. We have not taken one vote for granted.”
Breaking with tradition, Lake and the Arizona Republican Party did not hold an election night party.
She posted about the results in the presidential race and shared complaints from others about the pace of vote counting in Maricopa County, but said nothing about her own race.
The winner of the Senate race will replace Kyrsten Sinema, whose victory as a Democrat in 2018 created a formula that the party has since successfully repeated.
Sinema left the Democratic Party two years ago after antagonizing the party’s left wing. She considered running for a second term as an independent, but withdrew when it became clear she had no clear path to victory.
Gallego maintained a significant fundraising advantage throughout the race. He relentlessly attacked Lake’s support for a Civil War-era state law that banned abortions under almost all circumstances.
Lake moved to the middle on the issue and angered some of her right-wing allies by opposing a federal abortion ban.
Gallego portrayed Lake as a liar who will do or say anything to gain power.
He downplayed his progressive voting record in Congress and leaned on his personal story and his military service to build an image as a pragmatic moderate.
The son of immigrants from Mexico and Colombia, Gallego was raised in Chicago by a single mother and was eventually admitted to Harvard University. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps Reserve and fought in Iraq in 2005 in a unit that suffered heavy casualties, including the death of his best friend.
If elected, he would be the first Latino American senator from Arizona.