Kari Lake Silent as Arizona Ballot Drop Confirms Almost Certain Defeat

Authored by newsweek.com and submitted by Adventurous-Bar-6042
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Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, has yet to respond after Katie Hobbs' team declared the Democrat is the "unequivocal favorite" to win the midterm election.

Lake, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, and is a 2020 election denier, is currently behind Hobbs by just over 26,000 votes with around 93 percent of the ballots accounted for, according to the Associated Press tally.

While Lake managed to cut Hobbs' lead by around 10,000 following a ballot count on Sunday, experts have suggested that Lake will not be able to overcome Hobbs' lead with around seven percent of votes left to count.

According to the Arizona Mirror's analysis, Lake will need to win just over 58 percent of the remaining votes to surpass Hobbs, something Lake has failed to do in any of the post-election counts.

"At this point, there's one play left in the game and Lake needs a Hail Mary," Republican pollster Paul Bentz told the Arizona Mirror. "I don't think she'll get it."

Dave Wasserman, the editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, tweeted on Sunday that it is "extremely tough to see" how Lake will now go on to win the Arizona gubernatorial race.

In a statement following the latest vote count, Hobbs' campaign team said that the Democrat is the clear favorite to win the election -- but stopped short of declaring victory.

"With the latest tabulation results from Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties, Katie Hobbs is the unequivocal favorite to become the next Governor of Arizona," said Nicole DeMont, Hobbs' campaign manager.

Read more Kari Lake supporters reenact Biblical Battle of Jericho in Maricopa protest

"Katie has led since the first round of ballots were counted, and after tonight's results, it's clear that this won't change."

Arizona officials have said the vote-counting process could still take a few more days, with the majority of those uncounted ballots coming from Maricopa county.

Lake, who could be the latest Trump-endorsed midterm candidate to go on to lose their race, has frequently cast doubt on the integrity of Arizona's election system.

In an interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning, Lake said she is "waiting for the votes to be counted" while adding she would change how the election process in Arizona is run if she was elected governor.

"I consider someone's vote their voice. I think of it as a sacred vote, and it's being trampled the way we run our elections in Arizona," Lake said.

"I've been sounding the alarm for two years. Nothing got done. Very little got done last legislative session, and we need to get in there and restore faith in our elections. We can't be the laughingstock of elections anymore here in Arizona, and when I'm governor, I will not allow it."

Newsweek has reached out to Lake for comment.

Acceptingoptimist on November 14th, 2022 at 17:51 UTC »

I live in Arizona, so let me relay how this is a really big deal. Arizona has just a few counties that are all geographically massive. This means the entire Phoenix Metro area, and some of the peripheral smaller cities and towns, fall into Maricopa. The ballot drop that came in was same day ballots. Because Trump's great lie has scared his base away from voting early, most same day voting was Republican so they expected the drop to favor Lake.

Lake did eat into Hobbs' lead, but not nearly enough. And more telling, other Republicans that aren't insane like she is out-performed her on this recent drop by several thousand votes. So this was Republican voters saying no to her.

The Republican candidates nominated this year for Attorney General, Secretary of State and Governor, were all avowed election deniers and Trump-backed. Mark Finchman and Lake were the worst and most dangerous. Lake promised to do whatever it took to deliver Arizona votes to Trump next election and said she wouldn't have certified the last election. Finchman was even worse promising to invalidate any and all votes from Democrats.

In a bad economic year, and a mid-term where the opposite party of the President usually does well, there was a perfect storm to turn Arizona into a fascist state controlled by Trump Republicans. That the voters saw and pushed back so hard on these candidates in particular should make everyone feel good about democracy.

Having said that, Lake isn't going away. She's power-hungry and desperate. She'll leverage this last cycle to try and be picked as Trump's VP candidate. Then she'll become a pundit before possibly running again for office once her national profile is raised.

flexghost on November 14th, 2022 at 16:26 UTC »

To quote Josh Shapiro on Mastriano conceding or not

“I mean, who cares if he calls, right?”

THEBigHugMugger on November 14th, 2022 at 16:11 UTC »

Of all the people I want to lose... I want HER to lose the most.