PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, faces well-known former television news anchor and staunch Donald Trump ally Kari Lake in Tuesday’s election for U.S. Senate in a state with a recent history of extremely close elections.
The race is one of a handful that will determine the Senate majority. It’s a test of the strength of the anti-Trump coalition that has powered the rise of Democrats in Arizona, which was reliably Republican until 2016. Arizona voters have rejected Trump and his favored candidates in every statewide election since then.
Arizona is one of seven battleground states expected to decide the presidency.
The winner of the Senate race will replace Kyrsten Sinema, whose 2018 victory as a Democrat created a formula that the party has successfully replicated ever since.
Sinema left the Democratic Party two years ago after she antagonized the party’s left wing. She considered running for a second term as an independent but bowed out when it was 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 state law dating to the Civil War that outlawed abortions under nearly all circumstances. Lake tacked to the middle on the issue, infuriating some of her allies on the right by opposing a federal abortion ban.
Gallego portrayed Lake as a liar who will do and say anything to gain power.
He downplayed his progressive voting record in Congress, leaning on his up-by-the-bootstraps 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 eventually accepted to Harvard University. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and fought in Iraq in 2005 in a unit that sustained heavy casualties, including the death of his best friend.
If elected, he would be the first Latino U.S. senator from Arizona.
Lake became a star on the populist right with her 2022 campaign for Arizona governor.
She has never acknowledged losing the race and called herself the “lawful governor” in her 2023 book. She continued her unsuccessful fight in court to overturn it even after beginning her Senate campaign and as recently as last week refused to admit defeat in a contentious CNN interview.
Her dogmatic commitment to the falsehood that consecutive elections were stolen from Trump and from her endeared her to the former president, who considered her for his vice presidential running mate. But it has compounded her struggles with the moderate Republicans she alienated during her 2022 campaign, when she disparaged the late Sen. John McCain and then-Gov. Doug Ducey.
She tried to moderate but struggled to keep a consistent message on thorny topics, including election fraud and abortion.
Lake focused instead on border security, a potent issue for Republicans in a state that borders Mexico and saw record numbers of illegal crossings during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. She promised a tough crackdown on illegal immigration and labeled Gallego a supporter of “open borders.” She also went after his personal life, pointing to his divorce from Kate Gallego shortly before she gave birth. His ex-wife, now the mayor of Phoenix, endorsed Gallego and has campaigned with him.
Lake spent the last weeks of the campaign trying to win over voters who are backing Trump but were not sold on her.
Meanwhile, Arizona has two of the closest races for U.S. House, where Republicans David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani are seeking reelection in districts that voted for Biden in 2020.
Schweikert, now in his seventh House term, faces a challenge from former three-term Democratic state lawmaker Amish Shah in Arizona’s 1st District, which includes north Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley.
While Republicans hold a voter registration advantage in the affluent district, it has trended toward the center as college-educated suburban voters have turned away from Trump, reluctantly voting for Democrats or leaving their ballots blank. Redistricting ahead of the 2022 midterms accelerated the trend.
Schweikert won reelection by just 3,200 votes in 2022 against a relatively unknown challenger who got minimal support from national Democrats. Shah, an emergency room doctor, emerged as the primary winner among a field of six Democrats.
In the 6th District, Ciscomani is seeking a second term in a rematch against Democrat Kirsten Engel, whom he defeated by 1.5 percentage points in 2022. The district, which includes a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border, runs from Tucson east to the New Mexico state line.
Ciscomani, a former aide to Ducey who immigrated from Mexico as a child, calls border enforcement his top priority but has distanced himself from Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Engel, a law professor at the University of Arizona and a former state legislator, has pointed out Ciscomani rejected a major bipartisan border bill in February that would have overhauled the asylum system and given the president new powers to expel migrants when asylum claims become overwhelming.
Of Arizona’s nine representatives in Congress, six are Republicans and three are Democrats.
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