Democrat Mark Kelly Retains Arizona Senate Seat

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona has defeated Donald Trump–backed Republican challenger Blake Masters, dealing a major blow to GOP hopes of capturing the Senate.

Masters' defeat came after Arizona's Maricopa County released another batch of votes on Friday night, which expanded Kelly's lead and put a Republican comeback out of reach. Democrats now only need to win one of the two remaining undecided Senate races to retain control of the upper chamber. Kelly reacted to his victory by tweeting, "Thank you, Arizona."

Newsweek reached out to the Masters campaign for comment.

Control of the Senate could be decided soon, depending on the outcome of Nevada's contest between Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican candidate Adam Laxalt, who were neck and neck Friday night.

However, if the GOP wins in Nevada, Senate control will be decided in a December 6 Georgia runoff election between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Democrats achieved their razor-thin grip on the Senate following victories by Warnock and fellow Georgia senator Jon Ossoff in January 2021 runoff elections.

On Friday, Democrat Adrian Fontes defeated Republican Mark Finchem in Arizona's secretary of state contest. Finchem is a supporter of Trump's false claims about a "stolen" 2020 election and has said he would not have certified President Joe Biden's victory.

Finchem reacted to his projected loss by tweeting that "the media does not decide elections, the voters do" on Friday and noting that there were "over 370k ballots still to count."

Additionally, Friday night returns in Arizona showed that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs had expanded her lead over Trump-endorsed Republican challenger Kari Lake. However, Lake could still pull out a victory because of the significant number of votes left to count.

Republicans have denounced the slow vote-counting process in Arizona. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Arizona issued a joint statement on Friday that blasted "deep flaws" in Maricopa County's election process and threatened legal action.

"This election has exposed deep flaws in Maricopa County's election administration," the statement said. "Arizona deserves better transparency, certainty, efficiency — and most importantly, an accurate and prompt announcement of election results that can be accepted by all voters."

The statement went on to "demand that around-the-clock shifts of ballot processing be pressed into service until all votes have been counted, accompanied by complete transparency and regular, accurate public updates."

"We will not hesitate to take legal action if necessary to protect Arizona voters' right to have their ballots counted," it continued.

Maricopa County has defended its election process, arguing that the slow count is partly due to state law. Arizona's Legislature is controlled by Republicans.

The county described the pace as "the reality" in a tweet on Friday, sharing a chart showing that final vote counts took between eight and 17 days in all of the county's elections since 2006.

Update 11/11/22, 11:25 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional background and information.