Masters declines to concede in Arizona Senate race until all votes are counted

Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters released a statement on Saturday indicating that he would decline to concede until all the votes were counted in his race against Sen. Mark Kelly (D).

Several outlets, including NBC and The Associated Press, called the race for Kelly on Friday night, inching Democrats one seat closer to a majority in the upper chamber.

Party control of either chamber of Congress remains unknown at this juncture as votes across the country continue to be counted.

“If, at the end, Senator Kelly has more of them than I do, then I will congratulate him on a hard-fought victory. But voters decide, not the media; let’s count the votes,” Masters tweeted Saturday.

Kelly received 51.8 percent of the vote in Arizona, compared to Masters’s 46.1 percent, with 83 percent of the state reporting. The incumbent is currently ahead by approximately 124,000 votes, receiving 1,128,917 as of Saturday morning compared to Masters’s 1,005,001.

“For my people who knocked doors in the 115 degree heat, and for the million+ Arizonans who put their faith in me, we are going to make sure that every legal vote is counted,” the Trump-endorsed Republican wrote.

Masters has publicly denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, including in an election ad his team posted in November 2021, a year after former President Trump lost his reelection to President Biden.

“I think Trump won in 2020,” Masters said in the video sponsored by Blake Masters for U.S. Senate.

“America’s most powerful institutions conspired to manipulate the 2020 election. Donald Trump should be president today,” he wrote.