Anti-LGBTQ+ Trump ally Kari Lake loses Arizona senate race

Democrat Ruben Gallego has beaten anti-LGBTQ+ Trump ally Kari Lake in the race to represent Arizona in the US senate.

Gallego’s win, which was called on Monday (11 November), makes him the Grand Canyon State’s first Latino senator and comes despite president-elect Trump picking up Arizona’s 11 electoral college votes in last week’s elections.

Responding to his victory, Gallego wrote on X/Twitter: “Gracias, Arizona!” The post has been liked more than 7,000 times and commented on by some 250 people.

The former house representative will replace bisexual senator Kyrsten Sinema, who had a rollercoaster time in office, having jumped from the Green Party, to the Democratic left, before sitting as a centrist independent. She announced in March that she would not be seeking re-election.

Gracias, Arizona! pic.twitter.com/fWQ3AetOsy

— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) November 12, 2024

Gallego pledged to work on the country’s “broken” immigration system, offer support to veterans and protection for women’s reproductive rights. He also praised his Colombian immigrant mother, who raised him single-handedly in Chicago and sent him to Harvard University. He went on to serve with the US Marines in Iraq

He consistently polled ahead of Lake on the campaign trail, ending up with 50 per cent of the vote, compared to his Republican opponent’s 48 per cent.

Lake has a history of making anti-LGBTQ+ comments

Lake, a former TV news anchor, has a long history of making anti-LGBTQ+ comments. In 2022, she claimed she has gay friends who are “appalled with the BTQ+”. 

She has also hit out at schools teaching about gender identity, claiming they were promoting “confusion”, and previously tweeted that a “child’s gender is determined by God at conception, not by some woke teacher in the 3rd grade”. 

It’s likely that she also angered moderate Republicans with her attacks on former senator John McCain.

In 2022, she ran to be Arizona’s governor and has never accepted her defeat at the hands of Katie Hobbs. She’s lost a number of court cases in which she tried to overturn the result of her opponent’s 17,000-vote triumph.

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