PHOENIX — Kari Lake is not going to be governor of Arizona — at least not unless she runs again in 2026 and wins.
Without comment, the Arizona Supreme Court turned away her last-ditch effort to argue that she, and not Katie Hobbs, was elected governor in 2022.
That leaves undisturbed prior rulings by trial judges and the Court of Appeals rejecting Lake's claims that she should be allowed to present new evidence about tabulators used in the election.
With the new order Wednesday, Lake's request that the justices order a new election in Maricopa County is also now gone, forever.
Lake, the Republican candidate who lost to Democrat Hobbs by 17,117 votes two years ago, has exhausted all of her appeals.
Kari Lake
Politically, that leaves Lake with only her current bid to be a U.S. senator. At last count Thursday evening, Lake was trailing Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego by nearly 44,000 votes out of more than 1.5 million ballots already counted in the Senate race.
Lake has refused to concede. And there were more than 780,000 ballots yet to be tallied.
The justices issued a similar order Wednesday against Republican Abe Hamadeh, putting an end to his claim he is entitled to a new trial so he could argue he really didn't lose the 2022 race for Arizona attorney general.
Hamadeh contends that Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen denied him the time and ability to find and present new evidence to show not all votes for him were counted.
The appellate court judges, however, said there were multiple flaws in Hamadeh's case, ranging from some of the claims being filed too late, to the failure to prove that even if the ballots he said were ignored were counted that it would help him overcome his 280-vote loss to Democrat Kris Mayes.
But the ruling on Hamadeh comes with a couple of caveats.
First is that this may not be the end of the legal road for him as he still has a parallel challenge to the outcome of the 2022 election.
His attorney, Ryan Heath, contends illegal votes were counted in Maricopa County and wants all ballots cast in the county disregarded for both Hamadeh and Mayes. The Court of Appeals rejected that claim just a week ago, but there is still the option of a Supreme Court review.
Second is the fact that Hamadeh just won the race for the U.S. House of Representatives in CD 8. He will be sworn in in January.
The Supreme Court also issued an order Wednesday in the case involving Republican Mark Finchem and his unsuccessful 2022 bid to be Arizona secretary of state.
Finchem, who lost that race to Democrat Adrian Fontes by more than 120,000 votes, gave up last year trying to overturn the election. But he asked the Court of Appeals to set aside the decision by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian that his lawsuit was "groundless" and that he and his attorney must pay more than $47,000 in legal fees.
The Supreme Court not only kept that order in place but also upheld a decision by the Court of Appeals that Finchem must pay another $38,500 on top of that in legal costs incurred by Fontes in the appeal.
Finchem, a former state representative from Oro Valley, just won his bid this week to become a state senator from Prescott.
