Republican Martha McSally on Monday
conceded Arizona's U.S. Senate race to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
The win makes Sinema, who was first
elected to the U.S. House from Arizona in 2012, the first openly
bisexual person to be elected to the Senate.
Arizona voters have not elected a
Democrat to the Senate in nearly a quarter century.
Sinema came from behind to overcome
McSally's election night lead. As of Monday, Sinema was nearly 2
percentage points ahead of McSally.
“[W]e can work together to meet the
challenges our country faces,” Sinema said in a tweet after the AP
declared her the winner. “We can do this differently. For our
country, for our future, for Sen. [John] McCain, and for each other I
think we must.”
McSally conceded in a video message
posted to Twitter.
“I just called Kyrsten Sinema and
congratulated her on becoming Arizona's first female senator,”
McSally told supporters.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, congratulated Sinema in a blog
post, adding that it had poured additional resources into the Arizona
race.
“Arizona voters rejected Donald Trump
and Mike Pence’s politics of bigotry and fear and made history by
electing bold pro-equality champion Kyrsten Sinema as the nation’s
first openly bisexual U.S. Senator,” said HRC President Chad
Griffin. “For more than a year, HRC has worked to organize 800,000
equality voters across the state and we are proud to have helped
Senator-elect Sinema across the finish line in a tight race. We
celebrate this incredible moment and look forward to rolling up our
sleeves and getting to work with Sinema, and Arizona Congressmembers
Tom O’Halleran, Ann Kirkpatrick, Raul Grijalva, Ruben Gallego, and
Greg Stanton to move equality forward for all Arizonans.”