Kari Lake, Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, raises unfounded doubts about the results

(Trends Wide) — Democrat Katie Hobbs leads the Arizona gubernatorial race over Republican Kari Lake with just over half of reported constituencies, and while a lot could change as votes are counted, the GOP nominee is already questioning the results of the elections.

Kari Lake won the Republican primary after amplifying former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election, falsely insisting it was rigged and stolen. And while the current margins could change dramatically as votes are counted, Lake suggests without any evidence that there could be problems with the results released on Tuesday. (Hobbs, as secretary of state, rejected efforts by the GOP to overturn the 2020 election results.)

In a speech Tuesday night at the venue on election night, Lake said he felt it was “groundhog day.”

“We had on November 3, 2020, which was called Incompetence 101,” Lake said. He went on to suggest there was “incompetence” in both the August primary and Tuesday’s election, a not-so-subtle criticism of his opponent’s oversight of the election. It was not immediately clear what he was referring to, but there has been no evidence of any widespread fraud.

Kari Lake Republican candidate for governor of Arizona.

“We need honest elections and we are going to bring it to you, Arizona, I assure you. The system we have now is broken,” Lake said. He later told his followers to be patient and said that he was confident that he would win.

Hobbs also addressed his backers Tuesday night, saying the campaign felt good about what they were seeing.

“I know we are all anxious to find out who won each of these incredibly important races, but we will have to be patient and wait for all the votes to be counted,” he said in remarks as he prepared to receive the results. “We know that my opponent and his allies have been sowing doubt and confusion throughout this campaign, and it is unacceptable that they spread misinformation today as people exercised their right to vote.”

Repeating Trump’s lies

The four Republican candidates leading the ticket in Arizona have echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. And the right-wing media took advantage of the tabulator problems in Maricopa County on Tuesday to raise the idea of ​​fraud, to despite assurances to the contrary from county officials, in a clear echo of repeated attempts by some conservatives to cast doubt on Maricopa’s 2020 results.

Arizona is a key battleground this year for governor and Senate and will likely be again for president in 2024, prompting warnings from leading Democratic figures, including former President Barack Obama, that the GOP’s adoption of Trump’s election falsehoods and conspiracy theories could endanger democracy if they came to power.

Charlie Kirk, founder and president of the right-wing group Turning Point USA, tweeted a false claim about two-hour wait times in Maricopa County, which was the site of repeated partisan “audits” in 2020. A County judge Maricopa on Tuesday night denied an attempt by Republicans to extend voting hours by three hours, saying there was no evidence voters were prevented from exercising their right to vote.

Lake, the Republican candidate, has repeatedly said that she would not have certified Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona in 2020.

Who is Kari Lake?

The former Fox 10 news anchor in Phoenix quickly rose to become one of the top candidates in the 2022 cycle as she and Hobbs vied to replace limited-term Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

Lake closely followed Trump’s playbook in more than just the 2020 election. He promised 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 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 beating “leftist lies and propaganda” with a sledgehammer while smashing televisions using stiletto boots as a tool.

The candidate dispatched her main opponents with her strong denunciations of Democratic leaders’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, criticizing restrictions such as the use of masks as unnecessary and harmful to children. She welcomed comparisons of her to Trump until the end of the campaign, stating at an event that she was delighted when an admirer of hers called her “Trump in a dress.”

Hobbs, meanwhile, 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 hosting 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.