Allen West Has Apparently Lost His Re-Election Bid
Allen West, the former Lt. Colonel with a controversial military record who went on to have an equally controversial term in office after being elected in the 2010 Republican wave, appears to have lost his bid for re-election:
Florida Rep. Allen West’s bid for reelection remained too close to call on Wednesday, as the tea party Republican trailed his Democratic opponent by fewer than 3,000 votes.
Patrick Murphy has 160,328 votes, or 50.4 percent, to West’s 157,782 votes, or 49.6 percent, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, which has yet to call the race.
Murphy declared victory shortly after 1 a.m., according to TCPalm.com. West had yet to concede. Murphy’s .8 point lead is outside the .5 margin that would require a recount in the Sunshine State.
“Allen West was quite a character to run against,” Murphy said in his victory speech, according to the website. “And I’ll keep it at that, and hopefully that’s the last time I ever need to mention his name too.”
The Palm Beach Post reports provisional and absentee ballots in Democratic-leaning Palm Beach County still need to be counted. Murphy’s campaign manager told the newspaper the outstanding ballots weren’t enough to overturn the results.
We’ll have to see how things go with the Absentee and Provisional ballots, and whether the gap narrows sufficiently to trigger an automatically recount but, for the moment at least, it doesn’t appear that West will be able to close the gap.
Rep. West obviously will land on his feet. The contract to be a talking head on Fox News probably will be drafted sometime later this week.
Not to get OT, but my 25-year Quixotic quest to keep California from turning into Europe West might have reached a tipping point last night. California just voted to tax itself directly with a higher sales tax and to hike taxes on the evil people making > $250k per year (i.e., small business owners and other people who, duh, make hiring decisions) to fund pork spending on teachers’ union’s pet projects and other “it’s for the children” spending. It’s the first time in something like 20 years that Californians have voted to raise taxes on themselves. Somewhere out there, in the astral plane, Alexis de Tocqueville is laughing at us.
From the Department of Unintentionally Humorous Headlines:
Good. Another tea bagger bites the dust. The more the better. Maybe the republicans can actually get something done with less a-holes like this!
West is a joke and an embarassment. He has no one to blame but himself. On to Fox News for him so he can continue to appeal to the nutcases who still believe in his ideas and values.
I don’t even know if Fox News would want him.
Sic Semper Teatards. Michelle Bachmann just dodged a bullet-this time.
More Latin- Tea Party delanda est. That’s the goal for 2014.
maybe the military will take him back