Gallego wins Arizona Senate race for Democrats, AP says

Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego won an Arizona seat in the U.S. Senate, the Associated Press said late Monday night. With most of the ballots counted, Gallego won an even 50% of the vote and GOP challenger Republican Kari Lake won about 48%, according to the AP. The remaining 2% went to Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana. Lake was trailing during the count, and around midnight so many ballots had been counted that she could not make up the difference with the votes yet to be counted, the AP said.

Gallego claimed victory in an early Tuesday morning speech thanking voters for their support. Growing up poor in an immigrant community, being elected to the U.S. Senate seemed like an impossible dream, he told supporters. His election marked the first time Arizona sent a Latino to the Senate, he added.

Gallego ran to replace retiring incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who left the Democratic Party in 2022. Sinema’s election in 2018 marked the first time in nearly 30 years that a liberal candidate from Arizona clinched a U.S. Senate seat. Gallego’s election added to the Democratic minority in the upper chamber of 47 seats. The GOP majority on Tuesday stood at 53 seats. Though officials still need to call several races for the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans are currently in the lead there as well with 214 seats compared to the Democrats' 205.

Who is Gallego? The senator-elect touted himself as a moderate. He campaigned on his background as the child of a Latino immigrant single mother. He served under the United States Marine Corps in Iraq before his first election to the U.S. House in 2015. Gallego took a pro-abortion stance, co-sponsoring a bill to federally protect abortion. He also supported raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour and introduced legislation for a universal, full-day kindergarten. He also supported changes to the immigration system while deploying more border patrol agents to stem fentanyl trafficking.

Dig deeper: Read Lauren Canterberry’s report on a court decision to allow thousands of illegal immigrants to vote.