Arizona Governor Race Results: Katie Hobbs Narrowly Leads Kari Lake

TUCSON, AZ — Three days after Election Day, Democrat Katie Hobbs is maintaining a narrow lead over Republican Kari Lake in a still-too-close-to-call race for Arizona governor.

Lake is a former TV news anchor who centered her campaign around promoting the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Hobbs, Arizona's secretary of state, rose to prominence defending the state's election process while yielding death threats.

Patch will update this story with live vote totals as they come in. Refresh for the latest numbers available via The Associated Press. As of 2 p.m. Friday, the vote totals were:

• Katie Hobbs (D): 1,032,445 (50.7 percent)
• Kari Lake (R): 1,005,479 (49.3 percent)
• Percentage of precincts reporting: 78 percent

While hundreds of thousands of votes have yet to be counted, Lake has already attempted to sow doubt in the results. In a Tuesday speech at an election party in Scottsdale, Lake referred to the election as "Groundhog Day."

"We need honest elections and we’re going to bring them to you, Arizona," Lake told supporter. "The system we have right now does not work."

So, why the delay in results? A major part is because of all the ballots dropped off on Election Day in Arizona's biggest county.

Officials in Maricopa County have approximately 400,000 ballots left to count Thursday, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates told "CNN This Morning" on Thursday. Of those, about 290,000 were dropped off on Election Day at voting places.

The Race For Arizona Governor

Regardless of who wins, Arizona is poised to have its fifth female governor, more than any other U.S. state. Trump's influence will also be put to the test in a battleground state where the former president's allies dominate much of the state's Republican party.

Arizona's gubernatorial race received intense national attention after the state's 2020 presidential election results. The election was the first time a Democrat nominee carried the state since Bill Clinton in 1996.

The 2020 election results became a "monomaniacal focus" for Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix who launched her campaign for governor in 2021. Throughout her campaign, Lake battled with others in an industry she worked in for nearly three decades and made repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election the centerpiece of her campaign, according to a Politico report.

Multiple reviews in battleground states, including in Arizona, dozens of court cases, and Trump's own Department of Justice have f was no widespread fraud in the last presidential election.
Lake, 53, was born in Rock Island, Illinois, and grew up in Iowa. She spent 22 years working for KSAZ-TV in Phoenix before stepping down from her position in March 2021.

"Kari pursued a career in the news industry where she would become a symbol of truth in journalism when she rejected the agenda-driven press and walked away from the mainstream media after a highly successful 27 years," a statement on her campaign website reads.

Several years before Lake embraced the far-right politics of Trump, she registered as a Democrat the day after former President Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. She returned to the Republican party in 2012.

According to a report by 12 News, Lake left the Republican party because of her views on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"There was a period of time when I really thought the Republican Party had lost its way with the endless wars," she said.

Lake earned Trump's endorsement in September 2021 and was supported by other far-right figures, including Rep. Paul Gosar, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, according to CNN.

Lake's primary victory against businesswoman and lawyer Karrin Taylor Robson was a blow to the GOP establishment that lined up behind her in an attempt to push their party past the chaotic Trump era.

Robson was supported by Gov. Ducey, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

Hobbs, 52, has served as Arizona's secretary of state since 2019. She is a former Democratic member of the Arizona State Senate, representing District 24 from 2013 to 2019. She also served as state Senate minority leader from 2015 to 2019.

Hobbs also represented District 15 in the Arizona House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013.
Hobbs defeated Marco A. Lopez Jr. in the primary election to become the Democratic nominee for governor.

Hobbs oversaw a 2020 presidential election audit in Maricopa County demanded by Republican state senators and was a vocal opponent of the process. The audit kicked off in April 2021, even though county election officials had conducted two previous audits and found no evidence of widespread fraud or other issues.

During the audit, Hobbs received protection from the Arizona Department of Public Safety after fielding multiple death threats.

In an appearance on "CNN Tonight" with Don Lemon, Hobbs said, "I am absolutely not backing down. I am the one standing up for the election integrity in Arizona — and to protect the voters. There is not anything that's going to stop me from doing that."

The refusal to debate Lake was a significant liability for Hobbs, producing weeks of negative headlines and alarming some of her supporters.

According to U.S. News, her campaign released a statement saying that participating in a debate would "just create another spectacle" and that she would not "debate a conspiracy theorist."

"What I'm focused on is talking to the voters of Arizona," Hobbs told reporters during a campaign event in October. "I'm not interested in being a part of Kari Lake's spectacle or shouting match, and I'm going to talk directly to the voters."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.