It was déjà vu for Kari Lake in Arizona as she lost another bid for office.
The former television news anchor has been in the national spotlight as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s biggest cheerleaders since taking office in Arizona in 2022. She narrowly lost that race, despite all general polls in At that time they showed him ahead of the Democratic winner, Kathy Hobbs.
Now, after losing the Arizona Senate race to Democrat Rubén Gallego, Lake becomes the leading Republican contender in the 2024 election.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Lake, a staunch Trump ally and election slight, had lost. With 98 percent of the votes counted, Gallego led Lake, Arizona by more than 2 points (50.1 percent to 47.7 percent).
Trump trailed Vice President Kamala Harris by nearly 6 points (52.2 percent to 46.7) in Arizona as the president-elect swept all seven key battleground states. The results show the split between Lake and Trump in Arizona was nearly 8 points, the largest of any Republican in the competitive Senate race. As of Thursday, Trump had 1.746 million votes in Arizona, while Lake had 1.574 million.
Kari Lake speaks to the media outside a polling location at the Mesa Convention Center on November 5, 2024 in Mesa, Arizona. The vote between Lake and Donald Trump in Arizona was 8 points,…
Kari Lake speaks to the media outside a polling location at the Mesa Convention Center on November 5, 2024 in Mesa, Arizona. The 8-point margin between Lake, Arizona, and Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate in a competitive Senate seat.
Further
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David Schulz, professor of political science and law at Hamlin University in Minnesota, said about it. news week Lake’s performance showed that something was wrong with him as a candidate or his electoral strategy.
“In an election where Republicans have won almost every election, Lake stands out for doing worse in Arizona than he did in 2022,” he said.
“Trump didn’t hurt him this time, but he should have helped. “The Trump shirt wasn’t enough to save Lake, it suggested something about his message, his strategy or his candidacy,” Schultz added.
news week Lake’s team has been contacted for comment via email.
A missed opportunity
The only Republican to make a big mistake in the election was North Carolina gubernatorial hopeful Mark Robinson. But the Republican Party had long abandoned him as a candidate after accusations of anti-Semitism in his campaign and his self-description as a “black Nazi” on a porn website message board more than a decade ago. In a state that Trump won by 4 points, he lost the race by 14 points.
Republican Senate candidates Mike Rogers and Eric Howde lost In contested races for Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, both margins were less than 1 point. Trump won both battleground states by less than one point.
Arizona Senate candidate Donald Trump lost in a state he won by 5 points.
Arizona Senate candidate Donald Trump lost in a state he won by 5 points.
Illustration by Newsweek/Canva
Republican Sam Brown lost an even more competitive Senate race to Democrat Jackie Rosen (46.3 percent to 47.9 percent), but the margin was just 5 points compared to Trump’s victory over Harris organized (50.6 percent – 47.5).
However, Arizona was the main opportunity for the Republican Party and Lake had a real chance of winning. While polls often show Gallego as a slight favorite to win the race against Lake, the election’s most accurate pollster, AtlasIntel, tied the two candidates in its latest poll two days before the election.
Lake has struggled to win over the moderate Republicans needed to succeed in Arizona, including a long public feud with Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican Party in September paid Pro-Trump posters boast of “community unity” that does not include Lake, which could hurt his re-election chances. Instead, the former president posed with JD Vance, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard.
The first Latino in the Senate
Gallego’s victory in Arizona will not significantly affect control of the upper house next year. The Republican Party had already swept the Senate in this year’s elections, with the final result in favor of the Republican Party 53-47.
But Gallego made history by becoming the first Latino elected from Arizona to the United States Senate.
“Thank you, Arizona,” wrote X, formerly known as Twitter, after Gallego confirmed his election victory.
