Democrat Ruben Gallego wins seat as Arizona's first Latino U.S. senator

Gallego’s win over Republican Kari Lake in the Nov. 5 election, one of the few bright spots for Democrats in the state and nationally, came against a backdrop of Republicans taking control of the upper chamber and voters placing Donald Trump back in the White House.

With Gallego’s win, Democrats will have 47 seats to the GOP’s 53 seats in the Senate. But he is no stranger to being in the minority.

That was Gallego’s position in the four years he served in the Arizona House. And the U.S. House has been in Republican hands except for four years since Gallego was first elected to Congress in 2015.

He made no mention of any of that when he brought supporters together Monday night in Phoenix after Capitol Media Services, followed by other news outlets including the Associated Press, said he had won the race. Nor did he discuss what it will be like serving in the Senate for the next six years, at least four of which will be under a Republican president.

Instead, he described himself, in order, as a husband, a Marine, a father, a proud Arizonan, and the first Latino U.S. senator in Arizona history.

Several times, Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, mentioned the single mother who raised him, crediting her with his success.

He promised to work on what he said is the nation’s broken immigration system, and to continue to fight for veterans and for women’s reproductive rights.

“Gracias, Arizona!” Gallego wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The most recent data from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office Tuesday showed Gallego with a 72,705-vote lead over Lake out of more than 3.1 million ballots cast.

There were still more than 177,000 votes to be tallied. But the majority were from Maricopa and Pima counties, where Gallego was outpolling his Republican foe.

So far there has been no concession by Lake. The closest she has come to recognizing the outcome, at least informally, was a social media post saying she was outspent by 4-1.

Federal Elections Commission figures show Gallego’s campaign collected more than $56.8 million against $21.4 million received by the Lake effort.

Gallego also had the benefit of outside spending on his behalf, including $4.2 million spent by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in commercials against Lake as well as another nearly $9 million in anti-Lake efforts by WinSenate PAC, affiliated with current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Other groups such as Protect Progress and VoteVets ran pro-Gallego commercials.

Lake, by contrast, had little outside help — a point noted in the social media post by her campaign, which said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell devoted not a single dollar to helping her get elected.

What she had working for her was the endorsement of Trump. Yet the totals showed that didn’t translate into votes.

In fact, the number of Arizonans who cast a ballot in the presidential race was more than 75,000 higher than her vote total, suggesting that a number of those who turned out to support Trump — the latest numbers show him leading Kamala Harris in Arizona by more than 182,000 votes — simply skipped over her race.

Lake allies complained there must be flaws in the results, pointing out that more votes were attributed to Gallego than the 1.26 million registered Democrats in the state. But that ignores the fact about a third of Arizonans are political independents.

Conversely, the numbers suggest Lake was abandoned by many of the 1.56 million registered Republicans.

Gallego will succeed Kyrsten Sinema. Originally elected as a Democrat, she reregistered as an independent when she found herself at odds with other Democrats, and decided to bow out of the race entirely.

Lake also lost the 2022 election for Arizona governor, to Democrat Katie Hobbs.