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PHOENIX (AP) — Kari Lake won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Arizona on Tuesday, setting up a fierce battle against Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego for a seat that could be crucial to deciding Senate control.
In Maricopa County, which includes metro Phoenix and 60% of Arizona's voters, Republicans also were choosing between a slate of incumbents who have stood up to former President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election and challengers who claim it was stolen.
The primary will give insights about where the narrowly divided state is headed going into the final sprint of the 2024 election, when Arizona is central to the fight for control of the White House and Congress.
Gallego ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for Senate.
Accepting victory Tuesday night, Lake called Trump a “hero” and urged his supporters to back her as well.
“He can’t do this alone,” Lake said. “He needs backup in Washington, D.C. And I’m going to be his backup.”
The once-crowded field of Republicans looking at the Senate race thinned out when Lake, who built a national profile in Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement in an unsuccessful 2022 bid for Arizona governor, made clear she planned to run for the seat.
Lake defeated Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who had contended he is more electable and the best candidate to secure the border. But he struggled to raise the money needed to make his case to voters. Through the end of June, Lake had raised $10.3 million compared with Lamb's $2 million.
Lake faces Gallego in the race to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 but left the party to become an independent after her standing among the Democratic base cratered. Sinema considered running as an independent but opted against it.
Lake entered politics after leaving the news anchor desk at the Phoenix Fox affiliate and quickly became a rising star on the right. Grassroots Republicans were drawn to her biting critiques of her former colleagues in the news media, her tough talk on border security and her unwavering support for Trump, who for a time considered her for his running mate.
“Go vote,” Trump urged supporters in a telephone rally with Lake on Monday evening. “She’s fantastic. She will not let us down. Kari Lake, I just think she’s going to be as good as you can get. There’s nobody going to be better.”
She defeated an establishment-backed Republican in the 2022 primary for Arizona governor but narrowly lost the general election. Convinced she had victory in hand after winning the primary, Lake did not move toward the center or work to unify Republicans behind her.
This time, Lake made gestures toward unity, inviting people who didn't vote for her to join her. She said she will need “people from all walks of life" and told “traditional Republicans” from the GOP establishment that “we love you." But she also framed the general election as “a battle between good and evil” and between “the people who want to destroy this country and the people who want to save America.”
Gallego, she said, “is an extreme liberal Democrat from Chicago" who is aligned with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since launching her Senate campaign late last year, Lake has made fitful efforts to moderate her most unpopular views but has not been consistent. She disavowed a near-total ban on abortion in Arizona, which she'd previously called “a great law,” but later spoke favorably for it.
She has at times steered clear of false claims of election fraud, but she continues trying to overturn her loss in the race for governor. Just this month she filed a longshot request for the Arizona Supreme Court to take up the issue, though the justices, all of whom were appointed by Republican governors, have already rejected her claims.
Meanwhile, Republican voters in Maricopa County got their first chance to oust elected officials who did not embrace Trump's and Lake's false claims that the 2020 and 2022 elections were rigged. Justin Heap, a state legislator backed by Lake, knocked incumbent Recorder Stephen Richer out of contention for the general election. Richer is one of the elected officials responsible for administering elections in Arizona's most populous county but became a pariah on the right for aggressively defending election integrity.
Races for the county board of supervisors, which also plays a major role in running elections, were a mixed bag, with establishment-backed candidates winning in some districts while Republicans aligned with Trump's MAGA movement led elsewhere.
The feeling that elections are rigged against Republicans has permeated the Arizona GOP, though judges, election experts and Trump's own attorney general have repeatedly rejected claims of widespread fraud.
“I think that there’s primarily the discussion about how to do the elections and how to do them less corruptly,” said Barb Schwisow, a retired critical care nurse who sat outside a polling place at a table full of Republican pamphlets in Sun City West, a retirement community outside Phoenix.
Republicans also had an eclectic group of candidates vying to replace retiring GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko in a safe Republican district. The field includes Blake Masters and Abraham Hamadeh, one-time allies who have turned bitterly on each other since both lost campaigns in 2022. A state lawmaker indicted for his involvement in Trump's fake-elector scheme is also running, along with former Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned in 2017 when two aides said he sexually harassed them by asking them to carry a child through surrogacy. The race was too early to call.
On the Democratic side, two hotly contested U.S. House primaries in the Phoenix area also were too early to call.
The winner in the 1st Congressional District will face Republican Rep. David Schweikert to represent an affluent district centered in Scottsdale that exemplifies the changing makeup of the political parties.
Two Democrats are also facing off in a bitter primary in the 3rd District, a safe Democratic district that includes the heart of the west Phoenix Latino community. The Democratic nominee is strongly favored in November to replace Gallego.
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Associated Press writer Anita Snow in Sun City West, Arizona, contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP's coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024