AZ Central – The Arizona Republic
Kari Lake has finally met her match: Arizona voters
Elvia Díaz, Arizona Republic – November 15, 2022
Kari Lake, the leading lady of the Make America Great Again movement, has finally met her match: Arizona voters.
Lake’s hopes of becoming Arizona’s MAGA governor evaporated with every drop of new vote counts. But on Monday evening, some news networks and the Associated Press called the race for Hobbs.
Lake had been hanging by a thread, but her chances of pulling off a victory against Democrat Katie Hobbs seem more like an illusion than a realistic possibility, given the number of remaining votes in key Maricopa County.
As of Monday night, she was losing by 20,481 votes – just under 1 percentage point. If the final margin is a half a percentage point or less, there would be an automatic recount. That would mean dragging out this whole drama for weeks.
But the voters who turned on Lake must pat themselves on the back. These voters are the defenders of democracy, who successfully built a wall to hold off the MAGA restrictionists’ scheme.
None of Lake’s or other MAGA claims are sticking
For days now, we’ve seen and heard voters’ powerful message. None of the MAGA candidates’ tantrums are sticking, and that’s a great thing.
On Election Day, they huffed and puffed over a computer glitch that affected some vote-counting machines. They screamed voter fraud.
That was a serious glitch, but it didn’t keep voters from casting their ballots. And so, it didn’t stick with Arizonans who are tired of hearing conspiracy theories and the lies of a stolen election.
In the midterm: Arizona’s politically purple credentials are hard to top
Lake and other MAGA candidates later accused Maricopa County election officials of purposefully “dragging their feet” in counting votes – conveniently forgetting those overseeing the vote count are mostly Republicans merely following state law set by a Republican-controlled government.
That didn’t stick, either.
Cue Donald Trump. The former president was fuming to see that his hand-picked candidates, including Lake, were losing. Predictably, he fired off accusations of a stolen election.
That didn’t stick, either.
Their reaction is reassurance: You voted wisely
Over the weekend, some of Lake’s supporters called for military intervention because she’s losing.
“We the people are requesting the military to step in and redo our election,” a protester outside the Maricopa County ballot counting center said.
I kid you not. Lake’s supporters want the U.S. military to take over elections and presumably make sure she wins.
Don’t dismay, though. That call isn’t sticking, either.
If anything, those few protesters calling for military intervention make Lake look like a dictator wanna be – reassuring the Arizona voters who rejected her of their decision.
The slow vote count was exasperating, but that also gave us – the people – a real sense of normalcy.
There was actual excitement and gasps with every vote count revealed. That’s because we, the people, were hungry for mutual respect at the ballot box.
Elvia Díaz is the editorial page editor for The Republic and azcentral.