Republican Kari Lake Launches 2024 Campaign to Unseat Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema

Following her unsuccessful bid for Arizona governor in 2022, the Trump-supporting former news anchor has set her sights on Congress

Republican Kari Lake launched a campaign for U.S. Senate in Arizona on Tuesday, after previously saying that she believes she's "the only one who can win" and teasing her interest in challenging incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who was initially elected on the Democratic Party's ticket.

The former TV news anchor, one of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters, has said of her political aspirations, “We have an opportunity to pick up a very important seat so that when President Trump gets back into office, he can have people in D.C. ready to back him up with this incredible agenda."

Related: Kari Lake Appears at Mar-a-Lago More than Melania Trump and 'Practically Lives' in a Suite (Exclusive Source)

Lake suggested in July that she would announce a Senate campaign “maybe sometime in the fall,” setting her sights on Congress following her failed bid for Arizona governor in 2022, in which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Arizona's election results were certified in December 2022, with Lake losing to Hobbs by a margin of more than 17,000 votes. Hobbs assumed the office of governor in January 2023, but at the time, Lake claimed election fraud and refused to concede her loss. Instead, she launched a lawsuit contesting the election results, which was eventually thrown out of court. The presiding judge explained that Lake’s “evidence and arguments do not clear the bar.”

Related: Kari Lake Called John McCain a 'Hero' When He Died — Now She's Calling Him a 'Loser'

Lake’s lawsuit sought to ban the use of electronic voting machines in Arizona and require all ballots be counted by hand. Her attorneys were fined more than $120,000 after a federal court ruled that the lawsuit contesting the results in Maricopa County was “frivolous.”

“Failing to impose meaningful sanctions here might very well encourage others to follow suit by lending their credibility to documents filed in court without facing any real consequence if their certifications prove hollow or incomplete,” Judge John Tuchi said in his ruling, according to The Hill.

Arizona is poised to be one of the key battleground states in the fight for control of the Senate. Incumbent Sinema, who switched her party affiliation from Democratic to independent, already has other challengers in the race, the most notable being Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who announced his decision to run in January after Sinema exited the party.

“Growing up poor, all I had was the American dream. It kept me going: as a kid sleeping on the floor, a student scrubbing toilets, a Marine losing brothers in Iraq," he said in a statement posted to social media. "Today, too many Arizonans see their dream slipping away. I’m running for the U.S. Senate to win it back for you!”

Related: Progressive Independent Bernie Sanders Attributes Kyrsten Sinema's Party Switch to 'Political Aspirations'

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, a Republican, also announced his intention to run for Arizona's Senate seat, and the deadline for additional candidates to file is not until April.

Sinema has not yet announced whether she is running for reelection, though she filed the necessary paperwork in December.

Whichever candidate wins the 2024 election will represent Arizona alongside Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and husband of Gabby Giffords who won a special election in 2020 following longtime Sen. John McCain's death.

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