U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego will
be Arizona’s newest senator, according to the Associated Press, which
called the race for Gallego Monday night.

Almost a week after Election Day,
with more than 93% of votes in the state counted, Marine veteran and
Democrat Gallego was 2.2 percentage points and 72,626 votes ahead of
Lake, a Trump-endorsed Republican and former Phoenix television news
anchor.

“Growing up the way I did in the
environment I did, growing up poor, being here is something that was
literally a dream,” Gallego said during a celebratory press conference Monday night.

His supporters cheered as he reminded them he would be the first Latino senator from Arizona.

“As hard as I fought in the Marines, I will fight as hard for Arizona in Washington, D.C.,” Gallego said.

He promised to work to fix the broken immigration system, as well as to help lower costs for housing, gas and groceries.

Lake did not concede or make any public statements after the race was called for Gallego.

Even as she ran for Senate, Lake continued to unsuccessfully challenge
the results of the 2022 gubernatorial race that she lost by more than
17,000 votes to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Two years later, a day after the
Nov. 5 election, the Arizona Supreme Court dismissed her final appeal request.

As vote tallies slowly trickled in
over the last six days, Gallego maintained a fluctuating lead over Lake,
but pulled further ahead as more votes that favored him were tallied in
Maricopa County. Gallego defeated Lake in Maricopa, which is home to
some 60% of the state’s voters, by about 5 percentage points.

Gallego increased his lead over Lake
significantly on Sunday and Monday, from Saturday when he was up only
1.5 percentage points and 45,054 votes.

As of Monday night, Arizona had
tabulated more than 3.2 million ballots, according to the Secretary of
State’s Office, and had more than 179,000 left to go.

Lake’s campaign undertook an
aggressive effort to recruit volunteers to encourage voters to cure any
issues with their ballot so that they could be counted, such as
verifying their signature on an early ballot envelope if it had been
flagged as inconsistent with previous signatures.

The curing deadline ended Sunday,
after the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a request from the American
Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center, which requested an
extension to give voters more time to cure their ballots.

But none of the counties charged with counting the ballots that responded to the high court requested more time for curing, The Hill reported.
The ACLU claimed that more than 60,000 ballots had yet to be processed
by Sunday’s deadline and therefore could not have been contacted, but
counties claimed they all made efforts to contact voters whose
signatures were questioned.

Some of Lake’s most ardent followers
shared baseless rumors in the days after the election that Democrats
were attempting to “steal” a win from Lake. That echoed Lake’s false
statements when she lost the 2022 race for Arizona governor
to Democrat Katie Hobbs, as well as her evidence-free claims that the
2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Gallego has represented the state’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House since 2015.

He ran on a platform of making life
more affordable for the middle and working class, abortion rights and
measured increases in border security that include increased manpower
and better use of technology.

Lake toed the MAGA line during her
campaign, calling for completed construction of Trump’s border wall,
mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and an extension of Trump’s
tax cuts.

Lake sought to align Gallego with
Democratic President Joe Biden and what she called his “open borders,”
while Gallego reminded voters that Lake had drastically moderated her
stance on abortion in the past year.

In the coming year, Lake faces 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.