Kari Lake, the Republican former news anchor who refused to acknowledge her loss in the Arizona governor’s race last year, filed paperwork on Tuesday to run for Senate, setting up what is expected to be one of the most competitive Senate races in the country as Republicans try to win back the chamber.
The incumbent, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party last year to become an independent, has not confirmed whether she will run for re-election, but a prominent Democrat, Representative Ruben Gallego, is already challenging her.
Mark Lamb, a right-wing sheriff and an ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is also running….
Ms. Lake lost the governor’s race to Katie Hobbs by about 17,000 votes, a little over half a percentage point. She was one of many Republicans, including several in Arizona, who lost close contests last year after running on Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen. While most of those Republicans conceded their own losses, Ms. Lake followed Mr. Trump’s lead and continued to insist that she had won even after her legal challenges were rejected.
Her campaign circulated testimonials from supporters who claimed to have been disenfranchised by technical problems with voting machines, but a New York Times review found that most of them had been able to vote. She filed a lawsuit in December alleging deliberate misconduct by election officials — though she did not provide evidence of that, or of any unintentional disenfranchisement. A judge rejected her claims later that month.
In February, when she said she was considering running for Senate, she was still claiming to be the rightful governor and raising money for lawsuits. The Arizona Supreme Court refused to hear her case in March, and in May, a lower-court judge threw out a challenge she had filed over the verification of signatures for mail-in ballots.