Ruben Gallego wins US Senate race, making Arizona history

Ruben Gallego, a child of immigrants who found his way to Harvard, Iraq and Congress, was projected to defeat Republican Kari Lake on Monday night and in January will become Arizona’s first Latino U.S. senator.

The Associated Press, NBC and CNN called Gallego’s victory Monday after another batch of Democratic-heavy votes from Maricopa County confirmed Lake could not plausibly overtake him, handing her consecutive high-profile statewide losses.

Gallego, 44, posted a message on the social-media platform X that simply said: "Gracias, Arizona!"

Asked at a Monday night news conference to reflect on becoming Arizona's first elected Latino U.S. senator, Gallego said he didn't have many role models growing up. He told a story about how a Latino lawyer was the first person who demonstrated to him that Latinos could go to college and not have to work in the construction industry.

"And so what it means to me is that I finally get to return the favor to a lot of the people that were the role models to me growing up, that I did not have," Gallego said. "And I did not have a father growing up. And my father luckily left fairly early ... And so I relied on a lot of people that were my male role models to actually show me what it meant to be a good man and a moral man.

"And I feel like at least now there is going to be an opportunity that some young kids are going to be able to say, like, I can do that. Not necessarily run for Senate, but I can just go to college. I can go get a career. I can leave poverty."

Lake, the former Fox 10 newscaster, had yet to publicly concede the race. On Election Day she told reporters she intended to accept the results of the race. She never conceded her 2022 gubernatorial loss and spent years in court fruitlessly trying to overturn that election result.

During a weekend of poor results, a social media account for Lake’s campaign posted the message: “A movement of love: Of Family. Of Arizona. Of America.”

In a broadly disappointing election cycle for Democrats, Gallego was the only seat his party flipped in the Senate as the GOP swept to control Congress and the presidency.

Gallego was long favored to win the Senate race, perhaps even easily. But in the end, he narrowly won, likely with crucial support from Latino voters who were more splintered on the presidency, based on the AP’s exit polling.

He will succeed U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., whose popularity plummeted during the Biden era, leading her to quit the Democratic Party and, later, quit a reelection campaign that never really started.

She never offered a public endorsement in the race, but did acknowledge Gallego’s evident win in a social media post on Sunday even before the race was formally called. In it, she called for him to attend Senate orientation this week, as she did in 2018.

Gallego’s win adds to a string of close finishes that required several days of counting to resolve. Leading up to the election, Gallego led 79 of the 87 public polls taken since Sinema quit in March and he dominated in fundraising from the time he entered the race in January 2023.

Lake, by contrast, received limited financial support from the national party and none from the allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Throughout, Gallego’s campaign cast him as a fighter whose success was borne of hard work and a product of the American Dream. Gallego will move to the Senate after five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and two terms in the Arizona House of Representatives before that.

A bitter campaign

For months, Gallego blanketed screens in Arizona with reminders of his rise from poverty in a single-parent home in Chicago. On the stump, he often told supporters his got his first bed at Harvard.

He joined the Marines and fought in the Iraq War with a unit remembered for its heavy losses that he recounted in his 2021 memoir “They Called Us Lucky.” After his service, Gallego settled in Arizona and became involved in Democratic politics.

Voters picked Gallego after Lake waged an intensely personal campaign against him. In the final weeks, Lake sought to recast the Gallego biography by suggesting that his estranged father having a criminal drug-dealing past meant Gallego was “controlled” by drug cartels.

When asked about her comment, Gallego offered an emotional defense that may have resonated with voters and again underscored the social climb he has made.

“She’s raising it because my father, who abandoned my family, is a convicted drug dealer,” Gallego said as he became visibly emotional. “It’s a stain that our family has had to carry. This is why my mom, my sisters and myself have worked our entire life to really live the American Dream and to serve and honor this country despite what he has done.”

Lake also leaned heavily on the unsealing of Gallego’s 2016 divorce file with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego as an event that would show him in a new and unfavorable light. When the Arizona Supreme Court refused to keep the file sealed any longer, the records showed there was no significant information in a matter that was widely reported at the time.

He left his then-wife weeks before she gave birth to their son.

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Meanwhile, the personal attacks on Gallego seemed to outnumber Lake’s view of his record as a reliable vote for Democratic priorities and his opposition to President-elect Donald Trump and his border wall during Trump’s first administration.

As a Senate candidate, Gallego quietly quit the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus and shifted his rhetoric on border-related matters.

He acknowledged Arizona cities were on “the front line of this border crisis.” It was a far different tone than he used in Congress in 2017 when he wrote “Trump’s border wall is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Meanwhile, other issues, such as his support for abortion rights, rose to the fore. His support for expanded abortion rights aligned with voters’ while Lake often seemed to struggle.

Another political misfire for Lake

For Lake, the loss, juxtaposed with Trump’s simultaneous victory in Arizona, is another electoral disappointment for her political career.

She began this era of her life in 2021 familiar to many in the Valley as a fixture of Fox 10 newscasts and quickly gained national attention for her unswerving loyalty to Trump’s political agenda.

After her surprise, narrow loss in 2022, Lake spent years in court honing a reputation as an election denier. It was a hit with the Trump loyalists who make up the core of the GOP, but hardened broader public opinion against her by the time she entered the Senate race 13 months ago.

Lake’s combative political style targeted Gallego, Sinema, Democrats generally, many Republicans and always the media.

She memorably toppled the chairman of the Arizona Republican Party in January with the release of a secretly recorded conversation with him 10 months earlier in which he cited influential Republicans who wanted her to stay out of the Senate race.

Republican insiders said the incident left other Republicans wary of dealing with Lake. Trump canceled two appearances in the state, including one within days of the incident.

Lake never fully united prominent Republicans whom she belittled in her 2022 run behind her 2024 candidacy.

Karrin Taylor Robson, whom she defeated for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and former Gov. Doug Ducey backed Lake after her primary win, but didn’t make public appearances on her behalf. A February radio interview reignited Lake’s clashes with the family of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb personally urged Republicans to back Lake even after she called him a “total coward” because he didn’t file criminal charges of election fraud after the 2020 or 2022 elections that she baselessly maintains had widespread fraud. The insult led nine of the state’s 14 other sheriffs to condemn Lake for her words.

Support for Trump not enough

Lake also struggled to discuss abortion rights after the Arizona Supreme Court in April upheld an 1864 law that was a near-total ban on the procedure. She strongly backed the law in her 2022 run, but acknowledged this year that the approach is “not where the people are.”

Some of her most ardent supporters were dismayed over her rhetorical retreat on the issue. Meanwhile, Democrats prominently played up her past comments likening abortion to an execution.

Lake had far more success with border security, making it the preeminent issue of her campaign. She ascribed inflation and rampant crime to illegal immigrants. There was no meaningful difference between Lake’s positions and Trump’s. She called herself “Trump in heels.”

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Even so, she fell well behind his vote totals in Arizona, according to unofficial results so far.

As of late Friday, Lake had 90% of Trump’s vote total in Arizona.

By comparison, in 2020 U.S. Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., received 99% of the votes Trump collected in the state. In 2016, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., received 9% more votes than Trump.

Throughout the campaign, political insiders said Lake’s biggest gap with Trump seemed to be with Latinos. Trump has shown relatively strong support with that demographic, but Gallego proved particularly suited to vying for their votes in the Senate race.

Lake’s limited appeal was evident even before she entered the race, leading McConnell’s allies to avoid investing in her at all.

On Election Day, Lake told reporters she expected to accept the results of the election, suggesting she may not challenge the results. Even if she doesn’t sue, Lake will be headed back to court relatively soon.

Lake still faces proceedings in Maricopa County Superior Court for defaming the county’s Recorder, Stephen Richer, over his administration of the 2022 elections.

Earlier this year, Lake didn’t contest his lawsuit claiming she baselessly said he botched the election, leading to death threats for Richer and his family. The court needs to determine how much, if anything, Lake owes.

A new era in the Senate

Gallego’s win likely heralds a significant departure from Sinema.

She rarely interacted with national media in Washington, especially ahead of key votes. Before his Senate bid, Gallego was prolific on social media, offering hot takes on the issue of the day and was a frequent Trump critic on cable news.

Sinema will leave the Senate as one of its centrists. She helped pass much of the most consequential legislation of the Biden era, such as the national infrastructure spending plan and a broad domestic agenda that lowered the cost of some prescription medicine by allowing the government to negotiate with drugmakers.

She also helped prevent more from happening, often through her support for the legislative filibuster. Her Democratic critics blamed Sinema for not allowing a larger number of prescription drugs to be negotiated and for slowing the implementation of the plan they did pass.

Perhaps nothing more symbolized the limits Democrats felt she placed on her then-party than the failure of a federal voting-rights bill at the hands of a GOP blockade in January 2022. Senate Republicans used the filibuster to defeat the measure, which Sinema said she supported.

With Republicans taking narrow control of the House and Senate as well as the White House, Gallego may find himself wanting the filibuster that Democrats loathed during President Joe Biden’s term.

Gallego’s demographic breakthrough marks the fourth straight U.S. Senate win for Democrats, something the party hasn’t done since 1950, when Carl Hayden won the fifth of his record-setting seven terms in the Senate.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ruben Gallego beats Kari Lake in US Senate race, makes Arizona history