Democrat Reuben Gallego will be heading back to Washington, albeit in a new capacity, after his Senate race against Republican Kari Lake was finally called.
The Associated Press determined Gallego, who previously held a seat in the House of Representatives, to be the winner after vote-count updates on Monday closed off any remaining paths of victory for Lake.
With the closure of Arizona’s Senate race, the last one outstanding, the Republican majority in the body is finally defined at 53 seats, with the remaining 47 split between 45 Democrats and two independents.
This is the first time in four years that the Republicans will control the Senate, likely giving them a clean sweep in the 2024 elections. Republican former President Donald Trump is the new president-elect after he beat Vice President Kamala Harris. The Republicans are also expected to retain control of the House of Representatives.
Democrats gained control of the upper chamber of the US legislature after 2021 special elections in Georgia by a slim 51-seat majority which included four independent senators. They would have needed to defend every possible seat to keep it that way.
Gallego is a five-term House member and an Iraq War veteran who will replace Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat who left the party and decided not to run as an independent.
Lake, a former newscaster and a strong Trump ally who still refuses to acknowledge that she lost the state’s 2022 governor’s race, lost in a state that Trump won this year, further enforcing the trend of split-ticket voting in the 2024 election, in which Democrats performed better down-ballot than they did in the presidential race.
The control over the Senate, in which Republicans flipped four seats, will grant them strong influence over presidential nominations, from ambassadorships and cabinet posts, all the way up to Supreme Court justices.
Republicans can now turn their attention to the more than a dozen races in the House of Representatives that have yet to be decided.
If they succeed in taking the House, it would grant them firm control over the legislative agenda of the US until at least 2026, when the next congressional midterm elections are scheduled.
