Kari Lake almost concedes Senate loss as husband seeks defamation case dismissal
by Caitlin Sievers, Arizona Mirror
Kari Lake, one of Arizona’s most fervent election deniers, seems to have accepted her loss in last week’s race for U.S. Senate to U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego. At the same time, she’s still dealing with the fallout of her refusal to accept her loss in the 2022 election for Arizona governor.
Nearly two full days after the Associated Press projected that her Democratic opponent had won Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat, Trump-endorsed Republican Lake posted a video on the social media site X, formerly Twitter, signaling that her run for the Senate was at an end.
“I can say for certain that truth will never stop mattering to me,” Lake told her fans. “You will never stop mattering to me. These memories that we’ve made together will never go away — they will grow sweeter over time, and I will never stop fighting for the state I love.”
Though Lake, a former Phoenix television news anchor, said in the video that she was leaving “this fight,” she tiptoed around directly admitting defeat. Marine veteran Gallego’s campaign confirmed to the Arizona Mirror that Lake hasn’t yet contacted him to concede.
On Nov. 11, the same day that the Associated Press called the Senate race for Gallego, Lake’s husband filed a motion asking a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to dismiss a defamation case that stemmed from Lake’s refusal to accept the results of the race she lost two years prior.