Election denialism and the Big Lie suffered yet another defeat when, on Monday night, November 14, Arizona's gubernatorial election was called for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. It was a close race, but in the end, Hobbs prevailed over her GOP rival: far-right Big Lie promoter and conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, who campaigned on the false and thoroughly debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Lake's defeat follows the defeat of other MAGA candidates in Arizona, including Mark Finchem (who lost a secretary of state race to Democrat Adrian Fontes) and Blake Masters (who lost Arizona's U.S. Senate race by about 5 percent to incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly). Lake, Finchem and Masters were all backed by Trump, ran hyper-MAGA campaigns, and lost. In 2023, Arizona — once a deep red state and a bastion of Goldwater conservatism — will have a Democratic governor, a Democratic secretary of state, and two Democratic U.S. senators: Kelly and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
