US Republicans’ election denier Kari Lake loses governor’s race in battleground Arizona

WASHINGTON - Ms Kari Lake, one of the most high-profile Republican candidates in the midterm elections to embrace former president Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020, lost her bid to become the next governor of Arizona, Edison Research projected on Monday.

The closely fought governor’s race between Ms Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs was one of the most significant in the polls because Arizona is a battleground state and will likely play a pivotal role in the 2024 US presidential election.

If confirmed by election officials, this would mark an end to a bitter election campaign that Ms Lake joined in earnest when she quit local broadcast journalism last year.

Ms Hobbs thanked voters after her projected win. “Democracy is worth the wait,” she tweeted. “Thank you, Arizona. I am so honoured and so proud to be your next governor.”

But Ms Lake, a former television news anchor who has built her brand on scepticism of the mainstream media and the political establishment, appeared to reject the projections.

“Arizonans know BS when they see it,” she tweeted, using a euphemism for nonsense.

Ms Lake had vowed to ban the state’s mail-in voting, which conspiracy theorists falsely claim is vulnerable to fraud, fuelling distrust among voters about the safety of a voting method used by hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Ms Lake and Mr Trump had also pointed to temporary Election Day problems with electronic vote-counting machines in Maricopa County as evidence that Republican votes were being suppressed.

A judge denied a request to extend polling place hours, saying Republicans had provided no evidence that voters were disenfranchised by the issue.

In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Ms Lake said the lengthy counting process was “trampling” voters’ rights, and was further evidence of why election administration in Arizona needed to be reformed.

“We can’t be the laughingstock of elections any more here in Arizona, and when I’m governor, I will not allow it,” she said.

Ms Lake’s loss is the latest defeat for a series of candidates endorsed by Mr Trump.

The Democratic victories in a swathe of gubernatorial, congressional and statehouse elections defied expectations that voters would punish them for record inflation, including high gas and food prices. Instead, Democrats were able to curb their losses, in part by mobilising voters angry over the US Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

Mr Trump is set to announce another White House bid on Wednesday (Singapore time), refusing calls from within his own Republican Party to fade away after his loyalists underperformed in this year’s midterm elections.

The 76-year-old billionaire, whose 2016 win shocked America and the world, has summoned the press to his Florida mansion for a “very big announcement” at 9pm on Tuesday local time.

His adviser Jason Miller said the speech would be “very professional, very buttoned up”, although he expected a large group of supporters to be there, waving placards.

Known for his unpredictability, Mr Trump could still change his mind at the last minute, but for months he has barely hidden his desire to vie for the presidency again in 2024.

And delaying the announcement now, as some of his advisers have reportedly suggested to him, would be highly awkward considering Mr Trump’s boast that it would “perhaps be the most important speech given in the history of the USA”.

Leading up to the 2022 midterm vote, in which President Joe Biden’s Democrats had been expected to lose handily, Mr Trump made denial of the 2020 election results a key litmus test for candidates to win his influential political endorsement.

But the predicted Republican “red wave” failed to materialise, and Democrats will maintain their control of the Senate. In the still-undecided House, Republicans seem likely to eke out only a razor-thin majority.

The results have emboldened Mr Trump’s Republican detractors and sapped most of his political momentum heading into his campaign launch. REUTERS, AFP