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(Trends Wide) –– Democrat Katie Hobbs will win the Arizona gubernatorial race, according to Trends Wide’s forecast, beating out rival Kari Lake, a Republican and a leading proponent of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
Calling the 2020 election rigged, Lake had repeatedly said that he would not have certified Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona in 2020. Hobbs, as Arizona’s secretary of state, had rejected Republican lies about the election.
Lake’s defeat follows the electoral defeat of two other figures who denied the 2020 results in the state: Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters, and Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem.
Before the projection, Lake had already begun to cast doubt on the results of 2022.
During an appearance on right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s talk show on Thursday, he said: “I hate that they are slow, that they procrastinate and delay the inevitable. They don’t want to expose the truth, which is that we won.”
There is no evidence that election officials were delaying the reporting of the results. At a news conference Thursday, Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, addressed Lake’s comments. “It is offensive that Kari Lake is saying that these people behind me are doing this slowly when they are working 2 to 6 hours,” Gates, a Republican, said, pointing to poll workers who were involved in the vote count behind him via of a glass window.
Lake, a former news anchor at Fox 10 in Phoenix, rose quickly to become one of the most prominent Republicans in the 2022 cycle as she and Hobbs raced to replace Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. The outgoing governor had endorsed Lake’s main opponent, but later endorsed Lake in the general election.
Hobbs, a former social worker who worked with victims of domestic violence before becoming a state legislator, ran a much more low-key campaign, limiting her access to reporters and holding small, intimate events with her supporters.
He made democracy and abortion rights his central focus, portraying Lake as an “extreme” and “dangerous” figure who could jeopardize the sanctity of the 2024 presidential election by refusing to certify the results.
Lake closely followed Trump’s playbook in more than just the 2020 election. He vowed to declare an “invasion” at the border, in what he described as an effort to amass more power for the governor’s office to address the immigration crisis. , and called for the arrest of both Dr. Anthony Fauci and his Democratic opponent.
Before announcing her candidacy, Lake left her anchor job in 2021, stating that she did not like the direction journalism was taking after becoming a household name in Phoenix. In one of her campaign videos, she said she was sledgehammering “leftist lies and propaganda” while smashing televisions with the tool in heeled boots.
