Arizona 2024 Senate race pits Kari Lake and Ruben Gallego against each other in heated election for open seat

Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake face off in the battleground Arizona in a high-profile Senate race.

Gallego and Lake have tried for the open seat of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat became independentchosen not to seek re-election. The seat is among a number Democrats have struggled to hang on to in 2024. Republicans gained ground in several other states to win a majority in the chamber on election night.

Gallego, 44, is a Marine combat veteran who was first elected to the House in 2014 and represents a district that includes parts of Phoenix and Glendale. In his campaign for the Senate, the progressive lawmaker has worked to court voters in the middle while painting his opponent as extreme. Gallego would be the first Latino senator to represent Arizona.

Lake, who narrowly lost a hard-right campaign for governor in 2022, is a former television news anchor and close ally of former President Donald Trump. The 55-year-old, who has widespread name recognition in the state, has been a vocal denier about the outcome of both her own gubernatorial race and Trump’s 2020 battle against President Biden. But she often botched that message during the Senate campaign. In the run-up to Election Day, Lake launched personal attacks on Gallego, including about the circumstances of his divorce.

Until Sinema won his Senate race in 2018, a Democrat had not been elected to the Arizona Senate in three decades, although Sinema went on to leave the party. Then in 2020, Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, won a competitive Senate race to serve out the remainder of Senator John McCain’s term after his death, becoming the first Democrat to hold the seat since 1962.

The historically Republican state has been a key battleground this cycle, and as a border state, immigration has been particularly salient to voters — an issue that has tended to be more favorable to Republicans.

Still, Gallego has led in the majority of statewide polls in the months leading up to the election, and Democrats invested heavily in advertising in the state, which saw among the largest ad reservation gaps of all the contested races this cycle. Arizona also has an abortion initiative on the ballot — an issue that has proven to drive Democrats to the polls in past elections.