PHOENIX (AP) — Democrat Ruben Gallego has been elected as Arizona’s first Latino U.S. senator. He defeated Republican Kari Lake and prevented Republicans from further expanding their Senate majority.
Gallego’s victory continues a string of Democratic victories in a state that was reliably Republican until Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Arizona voters had rejected Trump-backed candidates in every election since then, but the president-elect won Arizona this year over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris
“Gracias, Arizona!” Gallego wrote on the social platform X.
With Gallego’s victory, the GOP will have 53 seats in the 100-member Senate.
A five-term member of the House of Representatives, Gallego is an Iraq War veteran with a varied life story that he has featured prominently in his public appearances and commercials. He will replace Kyrsten Sinema, whose victory as a Democrat in 2018 created a formula that the party has successfully copied since then.
Sinema left the Democratic Party two years ago after angering the party’s left wing. She considered running for a second term as an independent, but dropped out when it became clear she had no clear path to victory.
“Yes, he could!” Several Gallego supporters shouted in Spanish as he made his first comments after the race was called.
“I’m going to fight for Arizona in Washington,” Gallego told cheering supporters, saying he would fight for the people who didn’t vote for him as much as those who did vote for him.
In his brief remarks, Gallego repeatedly mentioned the single mother who raised him and praised her for his success. He pledged to work to fix what he said was the country’s broken immigration system and to continue fighting for veterans and women’s reproductive rights.
The Associated Press left a voicemail and email seeking comment for Lake’s campaign Monday evening.
Gallego ran ahead of Harris, suggesting that a significant number of voters supported Trump at the top of the voter roll and the Democrat for the Senate, a pattern seen in Sinema’s victory and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s two victories in 2020 and 2022 shows. Ticket splinters were also crucial this year in Senate races in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, which Democrats won while Trump won their states.
Republicans flipped Democratic-controlled Senate seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana. In the last three cases, losing Sens. Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey and Jon Tester also led Harris but were unable to overcome their states’ shifts toward the GOP.
Gallego was comfortably in the lead after the first results were released on election night, but his lead narrowed as more ballots were counted. Arizona is known for dragging out the count because most people vote by mail — which takes longer to verify and process votes — including many who cast their ballots on Election Day.
Gallego, the son of immigrants from Mexico and Colombia, grew up in Chicago with a single mother and was eventually accepted to Harvard University. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and fought in Iraq in 2005 in a unit that suffered bulky casualties, including the death of his best friend.
Gallego maintained a significant fundraising advantage throughout the race. He mercilessly attacked Lake’s support for a Civil War-era state law that banned abortion in almost all circumstances. Lake represented the center on the issue and angered some of her right-wing allies by opposing a federal abortion ban.
Gallego portrayed Lake as a liar who would do and say anything to gain power. He downplayed his progressive voting record in Congress and drew on his personal history and military service to build an image as a pragmatic moderate.
Lake is a well-known former television news anchor who became a star of the right-wing populist scene with her campaign for governor of Arizona in 2022.
She has never admitted she lost that race and described herself as a “rightful governor” in her 2023 book. She continued her unsuccessful court battle to overturn the verdict even after she began her Senate campaign.
Her dogmatic commitment to the lie that consecutive elections were stolen from Trump and her endeared her to the former president, who viewed her as his vice presidential running mate. But it exacerbated her battles with moderate Republicans, whom she angered during her 2022 campaign when she disparaged the tardy Sen. John McCain and then-Gov. Doug Ducey.
She tried to moderate but struggled to deliver a unified message on sensitive issues like voter fraud and abortion.
Lake instead focused on border security, a key issue for Republicans in a border state that has seen record border crossings during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. She promised a tough crackdown on illegal immigration and described Gallego as a supporter of “open borders.” She also touched on his personal life, referencing his divorce from Kate Gallego shortly before she was born. His ex-wife, now mayor of Phoenix, supported Gallego and campaigned with him.
