Watching election night results with Kari Lake (the candidate) different when she was TV anchor

Two hours after the polls closed on Election Night, Kari Lake reflected on what it takes to run for governor.

“Whether you win by a landslide,” she said, “or you win in a tight race, it’s grueling to run. It’s tough on a family. It’s tough on a person.”

This was not in 2022, as Lake sought the office as the Republican nominee. This was in 2018, as she sat behind the anchor desk at KSAZ-TV, Channel 10, known as Fox 10 Phoenix, which airs the city’s top-rated newscast.

The newscast was preserved on the station's Facebook page, though in the somewhat truncated form that aired on Fox News Now, which dipped in and out of the broadcast.

But the footage stands as a time machine of sorts to the era before the long-time anchor left the desk and began a meteoric rise in conservative politics.

Lake has been a continued presence on television screens after the polls closed on Election Day 2022. As a candidate in tight race, she has accused elections officials of bungling the ballot tallies and expressed confidence she would emerge the victor.

Watching a close AZ Senate race

In 2018, behind the anchor desk, Lake was not making predictions on the election outcomes. But there still was surprise at how long Maricopa County was taking to count votes.

At 9:25 p.m., Lake and her co-anchor, John Hook, were looking at the contest for U.S. Senate between Republican Martha McSally, who had been appointed to the seat, and her Democratic challenger, Kyrsten Sinema, now the state's senior senator.

“We can not even come close to calling that because we don’t have enough of the ballots just yet,” Lake said.

Hook mentioned that the results might take days, given all the voters who dropped off their mailed ballots at the polls.

Lake responded: “It may. You’re right, John.”

In 2022, an unprecedented number of voters dropped off their early ballots at polling places on Election Day, exercising their right to vote in the exact way officials had said would delay results. Maricopa County officials have said the verification and tabulation process, which they began Wednesday, will drag into the weekend.

Lake has not been as understanding as a candidate. In an interview with Newsmax, she suggested Maricopa County was “slow-rolling” the counting and delaying her inevitable victory.

Back in 2018, Hook told viewers at 9:53 p.m. that 950,000 votes statewide were still outstanding. “Maricopa County is incredibly slow on their results today,” he said.

Lake agreed the delay was unusual. “We’re at 10 p.m. and the polls have been closed for three hours,” she said. “We don’t know if there’s an issue or just how long it takes to get those numbers. We’re kind of stuck in a waiting pattern.”

'We just don't have an answer yet'

A reporter in the field, Danielle Miller, provided the answer from the tabulating center at Maricopa County’s election headquarters. This year, it has been the spot of countless reports from Arizona by national news networks since Election Day.

Miller told Lake and Hook that results from precincts were no longer being phoned in or electronically transmitted in any way. Instead, memory cards with the numbers were being driven to the tabulation center in downtown Phoenix. It was a security measure implemented by then-Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.

Fontes was on the 2022 ballot as the Democratic nominee for secretary of state.

Lake wondered whether the next results would be released by 11 p.m. or later. “Are we looking in the next five, 10 hours?” she asked.

Hook mentioned that in this era of instant information, “I think we expect everything right now.” But, he said, “voting is in another world."

Lake said she felt for the candidates.

“Can you imagine if you’re one of the candidates and thinking, ‘Well I might get a good night’s sleep tonight?’ Nope,” she said.

“And all eyes right now (are) kind of on Arizona,” Lake said, uttering a phrase that is just as true for the 2022 cycle, “and we just don’t have an answer yet.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Election Night results: Watching returns with Kari Lake, the anchor