Katie Hobbs Vs. Kari Lake: AZ Governor Race Still Too Close To Call

TUCSON, AZ — Four days post-Election Day, Democrat Katie Hobbs has maintained a razor-thin lead over Republican Kari Lake in the still-too-close-to-call race for Arizona governor.

Results from another 74,000 Maricopa County ballots were reported Friday night, widening Hobbs's advantage, the Arizona Republic reported. Still, only 31,000 votes separate the candidates and counting will likely continue for several more days.

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 8 a.m. Saturday, the vote totals were:

• Katie Hobbs (D): 1,100,005 (50.7 percent)
• Kari Lake (R): 1,068,908 (49.3 percent)
• Percentage of precincts reporting: 83 percent

There are about 275,000 ballots left to count in Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates told CNN.

If counting continues at the same pace — around 60,000 to 80,000 ballots a day — Gates told CNN he expects the county should be done counting by “very early next week.”

Pima County, Arizona’s second-most populous county, was expected to have roughly 85,000 ballots left to count by the end of Friday, Elections Director Constance Hargrove told CNN on Friday.

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 found there 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 and 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."