PHOENIX — Secretary of State Katie Hobbs defeated Marco Lopez, a former mayor of Nogales and border enforcement official during President Barack Obama’s administration.
RELATED: 2022 Arizona Primary Election Results
As Arizona’s top elections official, Hobbs endeared herself to Democrats with an impassioned defense of the integrity of the 2020 election, a stance that has drawn death threats. However, she's been weighed down by a discrimination case won by a Black policy adviser from Hobbs’ time in the Legislature.
On the other side, two Republican candidates are pulling ahead. Kari Lake, a former longtime Valley news anchor, and Karrin Taylor Robson, a conservative political newcomer, were too close to call into Wednesday morning.
Former President Donald Trump backed Kari Lake, who walked away from her nearly three-decade career in television news and embraced his lies about the 2020 election. She faced Karrin Taylor Robson, who was backed by prominent Republicans around the country looking to push their party to move on from Trump.
RELATED: 2022 Arizona Primary Election Results
As the midterm primary season enters its final stretch this month, the Arizona races are poised to provide important clues about the GOP’s direction. Victories by Trump-backed candidates could provide the former president with allies who hold sway over the administration of elections as he considers another bid for the White House in 2024. Defeats, however, might suggest openness in the party to a different path forward.
The former president endorsed and campaigned for a slate of contenders who support his falsehoods, including Lake, who says she would have refused to certify President Joe Biden's narrow Arizona victory. Robson said the GOP should focus on the future despite an election she called “unfair.”
Karrin Taylor Robson, whose housing developer husband is one of the state's richest men, is mostly self-financing her campaign. The GOP establishment, growing increasingly comfortable creating distance from Trump, rallied around her over the past month with a series of endorsements from Ducey, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The groundswell of establishment support for Robson drew national scrutiny to the race for what it says about the GOP base ahead of the crucial presidential primary in two years.
“Everyone wants to try to make this some kind of proxy for 2024,” said Christie, who ran for president in 2016. “Believe me, I’ve been through enough of these to know that 2024 will be decided by the people who step up to the plate ... and how they perform or don’t perform at that time.”
Robson is running a largely old-school Republican campaign focused on cutting taxes and regulations, securing the border, and advancing school choice. She has also emphasized Lake's prior support for Democrats, including a $350 contribution to the last Democratic president.
“I can’t vote for someone who supported Barack Obama,” said Travis Fillmore, 36, a firearms instructor from Tempe who planned to vote for Robson. He said he remains a Trump backer and believes the 2020 election was stolen from him, but Lake's support for Obama was disqualifying.
