For the first time since Election Night, Democrat Katie Hobbs took a brief lead over Republican Steve Gaynor in the Arizona Secretary of State race Sunday evening, before Gaynor reclaimed the lead with another updated vote count later in the day.
As of 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Hobbs has 1,057,229 votes, putting her 259 votes behind Gaynor's 1,057,488. Those numbers include updated vote tallies from Maricopa and Pinal counties.
An estimated 220,000 ballots are still yet to be counted in Arizona.
The Associated Press called the race for Gaynor on Election Night, but Hobbs refused to concede. Since Tuesday night, Gaynor's lead, which was once over 40,000 votes, continued to shrink.
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“The Associated Press has incorrectly called the Secretary of State race in Arizona with a razor-thin margin and hundreds of thousands of ballots remaining to be counted,” Niles Harris, Katie Hobbs' campaign manager, said in a statement Tuesday night. “We are cautiously optimistic that when all the ballots are counted, Katie Hobbs will be elected Arizona’s next Secretary of State. This decision by the Associated Press is head-scratching, but Katie Hobbs will not stop until every Arizona citizen’s vote has been counted.”
A graduate of Harvard Business School, Gaynor has been a commercial printing plant owner in Arizona, California and Colorado. He defeated incumbent Secretary of State Michele Reagan by a two-to-one margin in August's Republican primary election. He has not previously held political office.
Hobbs served in the Arizona State House and Senate. She has a bachelor's degree from Northern Arizona University and a master's degree from Arizona State University, and she served on the adjunct faculty of Paradise Valley Community College's social and behavioral sciences department.
