Rep. Ruben Gallego defeats Kari Lake in race for Arizona’s open Senate seat

PHOENIX - The Associated Press is projecting Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego to win the Senate seat that is currently being held by Kyrsten Sinema.

The projected win comes nearly a week after Election Day.

For the Democratic Party, this marks the reclamation of a Senate seat that was once blue, as Sinema was elected as a Democrat in 2018 before she became an independent in 2022, then announced she wouldn't seek reelection.

Multiple polls released in the months leading up to the election show Gallego in the lead for the race.

For Republican Kari Lake, however, this marks her second defeat since her entry into politics following a lengthy TV news career.

Gallego is a well known political name in Arizona

Gallego, who the Associated Press called in 2023 a "liberal firebrand and prominent Latino lawmaker," was first elected to Congress in 2014.

The son of immigrants from Mexico and Colombia, Gallego was raised in Chicago by a single mother, after his father was imprisoned for dealing drugs. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Reserves while he was on a break from Harvard, where he struggled with culture shock. He wrote in a 2021 book, "They Called Us Lucky," that he was asked to leave during his sophomore year, when he partied too much, his grades slipped and he broke unspecified rules. He was later allowed to return.

He fought in Iraq in 2005 in a unit that sustained heavy casualties, including the death of his best friend, and he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after returning. He moved to Arizona to join his Harvard girlfriend, who had become active in Democratic politics in the state. The couple married in 2010 and divorced in 2017, a month before their son was born. His ex-wife, Kate Gallego, is now the mayor of Phoenix.

Both Gallegos have called their separation a "private matter" and have said little publicly about it, though Ruben has suggested post-traumatic stress disorder he got from a deployment to Iraq contributed. Kate, meanwhile, had endorsed her ex-husband’s Senate campaign, and they routinely appear together in public, often with their son.

During the run-up to the general election, the Gallegos’ divorce became a political matter, after a lawsuit filed by a conservative news outlet in Washington eventually led to the records being unsealed.

Lake had hyped the release of the records as part of a broader attack on Ruben Gallego’s character, suggesting in interviews and social media posts that they would be a "massive story" and that the Gallegos’ fight to keep the record sealed showed they had something big to hide. Ultimately, the records offer little insight into the high-profile marriage or the reasons it fell apart, and in a joint statement, the Gallegos blasted Lake for hyping the divorce. Both demanded an apology from her for "lying about our family and the circumstances of our divorce."

Prior to his time in Congress, Gallego was elected to the Arizona State Legislature in 2010, where his soon-to-be predecessor, Sinema, once served.