Lake Kari won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Arizona on Tuesday, setting the stage for a fierce battle against Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego for a seat that could be crucial in deciding control of the Senate.
In Maricopa County, which includes metropolitan Phoenix and 60% of Arizona voters, Republicans also had to choose between a slate of incumbents who have resisted former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and challengers who claim it was stolen.
The primaries will provide a glimpse of where the closely divided state is headed as the final sprint to the 2024 election approaches, when Arizona will be at the heart of the fight for control of the White House and Congress.
Gallego ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for Senate.
Accepting her victory Tuesday night, Lake called Trump a “hero” and urged her supporters to support her as well.
“He can’t do this alone,” Lake said. “He needs backup in Washington, D.C., and I’ll be his backup.”
Ross D. Franklin / AP
The once-crowded field of Republicans eyeing the Senate race thinned when Lake, who built a national profile in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement in a unsuccessful bid for Arizona governor in 2022has made it clear that she intends to run for the seat.
Lake beat Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who had argued that he was more electable and the better candidate to secure the border. But he struggled to raise the money needed to make his case to voters. Through the end of June, Lake had raised $10.3 million, compared to Lamb’s $2 million.
Lake is facing Gallego in the race to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 but left the party Sinema considered running as an independent candidate, but ultimately abandoned the idea.
Lake entered politics after leaving her job as a Fox anchor in Phoenix and quickly became a rising star on the right. Grassroots Republicans were drawn to her sharp criticism of former media colleagues, her tough talk on border security and her unwavering support for Trump, who at one time considered her as a running mate.
“Go vote,” Trump urged his supporters during a telephone meeting with Lake Monday night. “She’s fantastic. She’s not going to let us down. Kari Lake, I just think she’s going to be as good as it gets. Nobody’s going to be better.”
She defeated an establishment-backed Republican in the 2022 primary for Arizona governor, but narrowly lost the general election. Confident she had victory in hand after winning the primary, Lake has not moved to the center or worked to unite Republicans behind her.
Lake Primary Campaign
This time, Lake made gestures toward unity, inviting people who didn’t vote for her to join her. She said she would need “people from all walks of life” and told the “traditional Republicans” of the Republican establishment that they “love you.” But she also framed the general election as “a battle between good and evil” and between “people who want to destroy this country and people who want to save America.”
Gallego, she said, “is an extremely liberal Democrat from Chicago” who is aligned with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since launching her Senate campaign late last year, Lake has tried to tone down her most unpopular views, but she has been inconsistent. She repudiated Arizona’s near-total abortion ban, which she had previously called a “great law,” but later came out in favor of it.
She has sometimes avoided false accusations of voter fraud, but she continues to try to overturn her loss in the gubernatorial race. This month, she filed a petition with the Arizona Supreme Court to take up the issue, but the justices, all appointed by Republican governors, have already rejected her allegations.
Meanwhile, Republican voters in Maricopa County got their first chance to oust elected officials who have not accepted Trump and Lake’s false claims that the 2020 and 2022 elections were rigged. Justin Heap, a state legislator backed by Lake, knocked incumbent Recorder Stephen Richer out of the general election race. Richer is one of the elected officials tasked with administering elections in Arizona’s most populous county but has become a pariah on the right for aggressively defending election integrity.
Races for the county board of supervisors, which also plays a major role in running elections, were mixed, with establishment-backed candidates winning in some districts while Republicans aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement led elsewhere.
The sentiment that the election is rigged against Republicans has pervaded the Arizona Republican Party, although judges, election experts and Trump’s own attorney general have repeatedly rejected allegations of widespread fraud.
“I think the debate is really about how to run elections and how to run them in a less corrupt way,” said Barb Schwisow, a retired critical care nurse, sitting outside a polling place at a table stacked with Republican pamphlets in Sun City West, a retirement community outside Phoenix.
Republicans also had an eclectic group of candidates running to replace incumbent Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko in a safe Republican district. They include Blake Masters and Abraham Hamadeh, former allies who have turned on each other since both lost their 2022 campaigns. A state lawmaker indicted for his involvement in Trump’s fake voter turnout scheme is also in the running, as is former Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned in 2017 after two aides said he sexually harassed them by asking them to carry a child through a surrogate. The race was too early to tell.
On the Democratic side, the results of the two hotly contested U.S. House primaries in the Phoenix area were also too early to announce.
The winner of the 1st Congressional District will face Republican Rep. David Schweikert to represent a wealthy Scottsdale-centered district that illustrates the changing makeup of political parties.
Two Democrats are also facing off in a bitter primary in the 3rd District, a safe Democratic district that includes the heart of west Phoenix’s Latino community. The Democratic nominee is heavily favored in November to replace Gallego.
