Democrat Ruben Gallego beats far-right Republican Kari Lake to win Arizona senate seat

Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego has won the race for US Senate in Arizona, becoming the first Latino to represent the state in the Senate, beating out the far-right firebrand Kari Lake.

Gallego will replace the Democrat turned independent senator Kyrsten Sinema, who ran for office as a centrist and charted a way for Democrats to win statewide elections in the right-leaning state, but then consistently stood in the way of her party’s priorities in the Senate. She did not seek re-election.

While the presidential race polled neck and neck throughout the election, Gallego polled ahead of Lake by several points the entire campaign, an unlikely position for a progressive congressman trying to win a battleground state. Gallego also outperformed Lake in fundraising, giving him more local airtime and mailbox presence.

In the end, he edged out Lake with 50% of the vote to her 48%, while Trump easily beat Harris in the state.

Republicans flipped Democratic-controlled Senate seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana. In the latter three cases, defeated senators Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey and Jon Tester all polled ahead of Harris but couldn’t overcome their states’ shifts toward the Republicans.

Lake ran into trouble winning over moderate Republicans and independent voters, both needed to deliver a victory. Attacks she had made against the late US senator John McCain reverberated, and the so-called McCain Republicans split on supporting her.

Lake ran for governor in 2022, losing to the Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake has yet to accept the results of that election.

Republican efforts focused more on Trump’s bid to swing the state back red after he lost there in the narrowest victory nationwide in 2020. Billboards financed by the Arizona Republican party that boasted of “team unity” did not include Lake. Instead, Trump was pictured alongside out-of-staters like JD Vance, Elon Musk, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard.

Arizona has had six senators in just over a decade, creating an endless stream of high-priced elections for these coveted seats. Republicans there have run to the right of the electorate, creating an opening for Democrats to make a case to new residents and suburbanites who are shifting to the left.

Gallego was able to tell his personal story frequently in his campaign. He is the son of Mexican and Colombian immigrants, who was raised by his mother and worked odd jobs at meat-packing plants and pizza shops to earn extra money for his family. He then graduated from Harvard and joined the Marine Corps, deploying to Iraq as part of a unit that saw some of the heaviest casualties of the war.