Donald Trump loyalist and prominent election denier Kari Lake has lost her bid to be governor of Arizona, US networks projected last night, rounding out a difficult week for the former president as he readies a new run for the White House.
Ms Lake, a former TV anchor, had been seen as one of Mr Trump's most reliable picks heading into the midterm elections.
However, her defeat caps a run of results that have raised doubts about the former president's place in the Republican Party.
The projections by major US TV networks come after a week of intense scrutiny of the vote count in Arizona, where Ms Lake and her supporters have repeatedly cast doubt on the competence and integrity of officials.
"Democracy is worth the wait," tweeted her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs.
"Thank you, Arizona. I am so honored and so proud to be your next Governor."
But Ms Lake, who has built her brand on skepticism of the mainstream media and the political establishment appeared to reject the projections.
"Arizonans know BS when they see it," she tweeted, using a euphemism for nonsense.
If confirmed by election officials, Ms Hobbs's victory would mark an end to a bitter election campaign that Ms Lake joined in earnest when she quit local broadcast journalism last year.
The former anchor married her made-for-tv smile to the flame-throwing political style of Trumpism, delighting the Make America Great Again wing of her party.
She made denial of the 2020 presidential election win by Joe Biden a key tenet of her campaign, and said that she would not have validated his victory if she had been in the governor's mansion at the time.
Her caustic attacks on journalists and election officials, including the Republicans heading key departments in hotly contested Maricopa County, earned her plaudits with the base.
But they also led to warnings that she was stoking trouble in a country still reeling from the January 2021 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters.
Democratic National Convention chair Jaime Harrison yesterday tweeted his congratulations to Hobbs along with the phrase: "Sanity wins".
Mr Trump, who is expected today to announce his entry to the 2024 race for the White House, took to his Truth Social platform to denounce the call.
"Wow! They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It's really bad out there!" he wrote, without explaining who "they" were.
Scrutiny
Ms Lake had declared herself "100% confident" that she would prevail, but, in line with Mr Trump's playbook, had expended a lot of energy sowing doubt about the election system.
Supporters seized upon minor problems with vote tabulation machines in Maricopa County, the home of America's fifth biggest city, Phoenix, which left some people standing in short queues last Tuesday.
Officials have forcefully insisted that no legitimate vote would be excluded, and mounted a well-organised social media campaign to push back at falsehoods circulating online as the count plodded methodically on.
Arizona has been under intense scrutiny for two years since Mr Biden eked out a narrow win in the state.
Maricopa County became ground zero for election deniers, who made unfounded claims about ballot stuffing, despite repeated investigations that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.
The slow-moving count in Arizona has been the subject of national, and international, fascination this week as it became increasingly clear that election deniers across the US had fared badly.
Ms Lake was thought of as a leading light in the movement, and Republican Party insiders, as well as media pundits, have noted that regardless of the result, she could be well placed for a spot on a future White House ticket.
