Shortly after the Associated Press and major networks called for the race, six days after the vote closed in the states, Hobbes said: tweeted Declaration of victory. “Democracy is worth the wait,” she wrote. “Thank you, Arizona. I am so honored and proud to be your next governor.”
Lake didn’t seem to accept the loss, questioning the result in a tweet an hour later that read, “Arizonans know BS when they see it.”
During the campaign, Hobbes said he would defend abortion rights in Arizona. Law vs Wade overturned. She also sought to appeal to independent and moderate Republican voters in Arizona, and gained some support from prominent conservatives who were uncomfortable with the direction of the Republican Party. Rep. Liz Cheney (Republican)’s Political Action Committee, attended by McCain’s family and the most vocal critic of Trump’s Republican Party in Congress, ran ads against Lake.
However, Hobbes’s competition with Lake was tight to the end, as Lake galvanized Republican constituencies and tapped into broader factors that favored her party, including high inflation and a backlash against federal border policy. When Hobbes refused to debate Lake, she drew criticism from both sides of the aisle, saying that Lake wanted “spectacle” rather than debate.
Much of Arizona’s Republican establishment voted against Lake in the Republican primary in favor of the more traditional candidate Karin Taylor Robson. Trump’s false election claims. And many worried that Trump supporter Lake would lose a purple state known for electing moderates like McCain. “We’ve made a bet at the heart of the McCain machine,” she declared at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, making a stinging move to underscore.
But even critics recognized Lake’s charisma, and former opponents, including Gov. Doug Ducey (Republican), co-chair of the Republican Governors Association, eventually coalesced behind her.
A former social worker and state legislator, Hobbs became Arizona’s secretary of state in 2018, turning the seat blue for the first time in over 20 years. That made her the next candidate if the governor resigned, putting her at the forefront of election officials facing false accusations of intimidation and wrongdoing in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Americans got to know Hobbes, who became a regular on national television after that election as a response to election denial in states that spawned unproven theories surrounding Trump’s defeat.
As governor, Lake would have served as a vote-proof vote on the crucial battlefields of 2024. If she won, Lake was poised to convene a special legislative session in the State Capitol to push for sweeping changes to Arizona’s voting system. she scoffed. She campaigned alongside other Republican candidates who denied the 2020 election results. Among them was state candidate Mark and her far-right secretary to Finkem, who along with Lake had called for a ban on voting machines in the state. Finchem was expected to lose last Friday, along with Trump-backed Republican senator candidate Blake Masters, and challenged Senator Mark Kelly (Democrat).
“I know my opponents and their allies have been sowing suspicion and confusion throughout this campaign,” Hobbes said in his election night speech, acknowledging that it would take time for votes to be counted. I reminded people.
Mr. Hobbes’ victory means that victories in Arizona, Maryland and Massachusetts were offset by Republican victories in Nevada, giving Democrats a net of two governors. In the state, Republican Sheriff Joe Lombardo ousted Gov. Steve Sisolak (Democrat), criticizing his handling of crime, the coronavirus pandemic and the economy. But while Republicans have high hopes even in blue states like New York and Oregon, Democratic incumbents have held up elsewhere, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and the toss-up races in Kansas.
Hobbes’ victory surprised many Republicans and even some Democrats. The operatives who expected Kerry’s narrow victory nevertheless made Hobbes — who was not in command of the campaign — widely known around the Phoenix subway, where most of the state’s voters live. I had predicted that I would fall for a former newscaster.
Even if incomplete results posted mid-last week began to point to Kerry’s victory in the Senate, Republican modeling still has Lake ahead of his Democratic opponents, people familiar with the numbers say. But by the weekend, the dynamic had changed, with one of Lake’s advisers calling the gubernatorial run a “coin toss.”
A person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly, said the results showed that Lake did not perform as well as expected, especially among independent voters. Afterwards, Republican unrest intensified.
Lake spent the final day of the campaign dealing with Republican voters instead of courting independents. According to state data, more than one-third of him in Arizona voters are independents, just below the percentage of Republicans and slightly above the percentage of Democrats.
She continued to attack McCain, asking the crowd: Come out! She brought Stephen K. Bannon, former White House chief strategist and chairman of her news executive at Breitbart, to the stage to enthuse him with his far-right radio show War Room. Did.
She also unfoundedly insinuated that Hillary Clinton was trying to kill her and called on audiences to promote white supremacists as “patriots” and to execute her political opponents. I asked for a round of applause for Wendy Rogers. We need to build more gallows. “
This approach has attracted crowds of enthusiastic supporters, but the enthusiasm doesn’t seem to translate into a broad enough coalition to win.
With vote tallies still underway, some Republicans will either vote in person on Election Day or vote early at the polling place by Trump, Lake, state GOP leader Kerry Ward, and others. may have influenced Republican voter turnout. The directive ran counter to the popularity of early voting in the state, with Republican early voting performance declining in Maricopa County on the final day of the election.
The Republican strategy depended on the smooth running of the election. Instead, about a third of polling places across the county have problems with the printers that make their ballots on demand, and Lake, Trump, and other Republicans say the problem is disproportionately disproportionate to the Republican area. A series of unproven accusations of targeting County officials responded forcefully, and a Washington Post data analysis found that Republican areas in the county were not overly affected by the issue.
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez of Phoenix and Amy B Wang of Washington contributed to this report.
