Democrat Kelly secures Ariz. Senate seat
Votes are still being tallied in state
PHOENIX – Incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly secured a six-year term in the Senate late Friday after a promised “red wave’’ of votes from Maricopa County failed to materialize.
Of the nearly 75,000 votes reported by the state’s largest county Friday, Kelly picked up 40,719 of them compared to 32,378 for Republican Blake Masters. That boosted Kelly’s statewide total to 1,128,917 and 51.8% of the total ballots counted so far in that race.
There are still about 370,000 votes to be counted in the state. Most of those are the ballots that were early ballots that were dropped off at Maricopa County polling places on Election Day.
It was those day-of ballots that Masters, along with gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, had argued would swing so heavily in favor of GOP contenders to erase the leads that the Democrats had held pretty much since the first results were announced Tuesday evening.
That didn’t happen. And at this point Masters, a political novice who was backed by Donald Trump, would have to pick up two thirds of those remaining uncounted votes to take the lead – the so-called red wave – something the latest figures show is unlikely to happen.
Lake also found herself drifting farther behind Democrat Katie Hobbs who, like Kelly, picked up more of those newly announced votes than her Republican foe.
It wasn’t all bad news for GOP contenders.
Yavapai County added another 10,087 votes on Friday, with the margins there going 3-1 for Republicans. But that was offset by Pima County’s 24,637 new votes breaking 2-1 for Democrats.
The bottom line left Hobbs on Friday night with 1,100,005 votes – 50.7% of the total – against Lake with 1,068,908 votes – leaving the race still too close to call but still within Lake’s grasp if close to 55% of the uncounted ballots swing her way.
It would appear, however, the race for secretary of state, like that for the Senate, is over.
Democrat Adrian Fontes managed to add nearly 41,000 new votes from Maricopa County in his bid to be the state’s chief elections officer against fewer than 32,000 for Republican Mark Finchem. Fontes, who had been Maricopa County recorder until being defeated in 2020, now leads the race by more than 118,000 votes, 52.8% of the total – a bigger margin than even Kelly – putting Finchem, a state lawmaker from Oro Valley who attended the Jan. 6 rally ahead of the riot and who said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, in the likely nearly impossible position of having to pick up more than two thirds of all remaining votes.
Too close to call is the race for attorney general even as Democrat Kris Mayes picked up more votes from Maricopa County on Friday than Republican Abe Hamadeh. Mayes now has 50.4% of the vote, with a 19,151-vote lead.
The same is true in the bid by Democrat Kathy Hoffman to get a new term as state schools chief. Even with a boost on Friday, she has only50.2% of the vote against Republican Tom Horne, leading by 6,665.
Friday’s vote tallies don’t end the race.
Of the approximately 370,000 votes yet to be counted, more than 265,000 of them are from Maricopa County. And the lion’s share of those are those early ballots dropped off on Election Day – the ballots that Republicans have been insisting are bound to go their way.
All this comes as the Arizona Republican Party and the Republican National Committee complained Friday that ballots aren’t being processed fast enough.
Bill Gates, who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said people are working 14 to 18-hour days. But that did not satisfy Kelli Ward, who chairs the state GOP, who wanted roundthe-clock counting.
Gates slapped back, calling the complaint a “political stunt.’’ He said saying that counting is going no slower than it has since 2006. And Gates rejected the idea of increasing staff.
“Changing processes or adding untrained personnel would only slow the counting at this point, and we will not deny the voters of Maricopa County an accurate tabulation of their votes,’’ he said.
The rate of counting has led to conspiracy theories by some GOP candidates and their supporters that there may be some behindthe-scenes manipulation. If nothing else, it has caused Lake to charge that officials in the state’s largest county are deliberately delaying the counting of ballots that would favor Republican candidates.
Gates, a Republican, said that isn’t true. But he did say there is a way to make counting go faster in the future: Remove some Election Day options for voters, just as Florida has done.
“Florida does not allow for mail-in ballots to be dropped off at voting locations on Election Day,’’ Gates said.
Arizona does. And County Recorder Stephen Richer said the practice has exploded. In 2014, he said, there were just 112,000 of these day-of ballots. By last year it had ballooned to 172,000,’’ Richer said. And this year the number hit 290,000.
Pima County reported about 44,000 of those “late early’’ ballots this year.
Richer said these ballots have to be reviewed, including matching signatures and verifying that the ballot in the envelope matches the information on the outside.