Trump's candidates celebrate after Arizona primary, but some Republicans are worried

While ABC News and others haven't made projections in her still too-close-to-call contest, former TV reporter Kari Lake, Donald Trump's pick in Arizona's GOP gubernatorial primary, went ahead and claimed victory in Phoenix on Wednesday as other state candidates backed by the former president also celebrated wins down the ballot. Lake -- echoing Trump -- described herself as triumphing over unsubstantiated wrongdoing that was sometimes based only on what she said she was told by others. "We outvoted the fraud," she insisted. "The MAGA movement voted like their lives depended on it." Asked whether she should be declaring victory before the race has been officially called -- in an election she's already suggested needs to be investigated -- a smiling Lake said her team was projecting a wide lead to come, so she was confident in calling the race for herself.

"And, frankly, I'm gonna be having dinner with my husband tonight, and I don't want anybody to call me and ask me for a comment," said Lake, a longtime local news anchor in Phoenix who left her job in 2021 to run for office. "So we're doing this a little bit early because I actually want to take one night off. I haven't had a night off for a long time." But while eager to claim and celebrate her victory, despite votes still coming in, Lake also continued to allege irregularities in the primary process -- citing the shortage of paper ballots in Pinal County, which officials there said was due to an "unprecedented demand for in-person ballots" in certain precincts. "I am not satisfied with how the election was run. We had major issues," Lake said, not providing evidence to the press but maintaining that's what the people of Arizona were telling her. "We have a lot of evidence of irregularities and problems, and we're going to address those." Lake also said that in the lead-up to the general election in November, she would continue talking about the widely disproven claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. "Because I won doesn't mean I'm going to now pivot and try to become a Democrat. Absolutely not," she said -- though, notably, she has acknowledged on the campaign trail that she did support Democratic causes in the past before converting to Trump's GOP. "We will continue to talk about the election because we want to make sure we shore up those election laws."