With three months remaining in 2023, Republican Kari Lake raised $1 million more than her Democratic opponent in the race for Arizona Senate. In October, the Republican declared her candidacy for the Senate, potentially triggering a three-way race with independent current Senator Kyrsten Sinema and a Democratic Party contender. After launching her candidacy for the Senate on October 10, 2023, Lake’s campaign reported raising $2.1 million in the fourth quarter of the same year. Representative Ruben Gallego’s Senate campaign collected $6.5 million over the same period. Gallego is generally seen to be the leader in the Democratic Party primary for the seat.
Former TV news anchor Lake lost a close race for governor of Arizona in 2022 to her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs. Despite her repeated failure in court, she refused to accept defeat and asserted that the election had been stolen from her. In a statement emailed to Newsweek, the Lake campaign expressed satisfaction with its fundraising performance in the fourth quarter.
Sinema, the current Democratic senator from Arizona, revealed in December 2022 that she would be running as an independent, vacating the seat she had won in November 2018. She hasn’t said if she’ll run for reelection in November, but for committee reasons, she’s still on the Democratic side. Sinema has a campaign war chest of $10.8 million as of her most recent fundraising report, which covered the third quarter of 2023.
Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder of Maricopa County, sued Lake in December for libel, and a judge in Maricopa County denied her motion to dismiss the case. In the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, Richer is suing Lake for damages after the latter accused him of “printing a 19-inch picture, the incorrect image on the ballot so that the tabulators would clog” and inserting “300,000 illicit votes” on election day.
