Kari Lake continues to chip away at Ruben Gallego’s lead in the US Senate race Arizona Mirror

Lake, a former Phoenix television news anchor, benefited from votes gathered in some of the state’s most deeply red counties such as Yavapai, where she won an overwhelming nearly 76% of the new votes to Gallego’s 22%. U.S. Congressman and Marine veteran Gallego had the advantage in new votes from Coconino County, achieve 57% to Lake’s 39%.

About 60% of the Grand Canyon State’s voters live in Maricopa County, where Lake led Gallego in new votes counted Friday by 2 percentage points. The county has come under fire for its slow count, both from Arizonans and those across the country watching the outcome of the race.

Maricopa County has taken one on average 13 days completely counting his ballots over the past 16 years, but counting has went even slower this yearin part because of a long two-page poll that takes longer to process and tabulate.

As of Friday night, about 81% of the state’s ballots had been counted, with about 351,000 left to count in Maricopa County and nearly 629,000 statewide. At that time, 2.8 million ballots had been countedout of the state’s nearly 4.4 million registered voters, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Lake and her campaign continued an aggressive effort Friday to recruit people to urge voters to address any problems with their ballots, such as a missing signature on an early ballot, so their votes would count.

President-elect Donald Trump’s devotees and her supporters remained optimistic about her chances of overtaking Gallego as more results come in.

“Guys, I’m running through the voters that are left to count in Arizona, and between that and the voters that we know we went after, Kari Lake is an incredible place,” Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point USA. said in a post on social media X. “This thing is going to be close and every ballot matters, but I feel really good about what we know we have left.”

Turning Point USA is a right-wing student activist group based in Phoenix that has been a major player in Republican get-out-the-vote efforts this election cycle.

“We have hundreds of full-time employees and hundreds more volunteers curating every last ballot in Arizona for Kari Lake,” Turning Points CEO Charlie Kirk published on X Friday. “We are relentless.”

Lake and Gallego, who have represented Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House since 2015, ran hard-hitting campaigns that took turns trading personal barbs and accusations of extremism.

Gallego ran on a platform to make life more affordable for the middle and working classes, restore abortion rights and make measured increases in border security that would include increased manpower and better use of technology.

Lake copied Trump’s style in his campaign, calling for the completion of his border wall, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and an extension of his tax cuts.

Trump endorsed Lake in both her unsuccessful 2022 bid for Arizona governor as well as this year’s bid for senator.

In the midst of his Senate campaign, Lake continued to unsuccessfully challenge the results of the governor’s race in court, and two years later, she still hasn’t conceded the race. Arizona Supreme Court Wednesday rejected her final appeal in the case.

Lake also faces the prospect of paying damages not yet determined to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer after she legally admitted wrongdoing in his defamation suit regarding Lake’s false claims that Richer helped rig the 2022 governor’s race against her.