Democrat Kris Mayes confident narrow Arizona AG win will withstand recount
Nov 24, 2022, 5:00 AM
PHOENIX – Arizona Attorney General-elect Kris Mayes said Wednesday she’s confident her razor-thin electoral victory will stand up to a mandatory full recount.
“I feel confident where we stand, and I know that our elections officials are going to do a great job with the recount,” the Democrat told KTAR News 92.3 FM.
When the last of Arizona’s 2.5 million-plus ballots were counted on Monday, Mayes came out 510 votes ahead of Republican Abe Hamadeh.
“Are they going to call me Landslide Mayes?” she joked.
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The margin of .02 percentage points was well within the .5-point threshold for triggering an automatic recount under state law. The recount process will start after the state canvass, which is scheduled for Dec. 5.
“It rarely results in an election being overturned,” Mayes said. “But, yeah, we’ll go through that process. There’s a process set up where we’re happy to obviously go through that.”
The former member of the Arizona Corporation Commission said she hasn’t heard from Hamadeh, who filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the results.
Mayes said the drawn-out count – it wasn’t finished until two weeks after the Nov. 8 election – was nerve-wracking.
“It was sort of up and down and ebbing and flowing,” she said. “I feel like people are going to see my name as being synonymous with the word ‘refresh’ because everybody was refreshing the secretary of state’s website to see what the results were.”
