The Republican Party took control of the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s election, dealing a withering blow to President Barack Obama, but Democrats narrowly clung to a majority in the Senate.
Republicans were projected to nab 60 seats in the House, Fox News said, easily exceeding the 39 needed to capture control of the chamber from the Democrats for the first time since 2006.
Rep. John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is likely to become Speaker of the House, said that Tuesday’s results were a repudiation of big government and sent a message to Obama.
“That message is: Change course,” Boehner said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, meanwhile, won re-election after a fierce fight with Sharron Angle, one of Election 2010’s most visible tea-party candidates. Republicans were projected to gain at least six seats in the Senate.
“Today, Nevada chose hope over fear. Nevada chose to go forward, not backwards,” Reid told supporters in his victory speech. The embattled lawmaker vowed to press on for jobs, later adding: “The bell that rang wasn’t the end of the fight, but the start of the next round.”
The re-election of Reid sets up a faceoff against Boehner, as he still will oversee the Democratic-controlled Senate — but one with a few more Republicans than in the current session of Congress.
The size of the Republican wave was evident early on. Democrats lost bellwether House contests in Virginia and Indiana, with Reps. Tom Perriello and Baron Hill falling to their Republican opponents in closely watched races. Rep. John Spratt, who chairs the House Budget Committee, fell to Republican Mick Mulvaney in South Carolina after jousting over health-care reform and Obama’s stimulus bill.
Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, won re-election from Massachusetts. Meanwhile, 26-year Democratic House veteran Paul Kanjorski, who wrote major parts of the Wall Street reform bill, lost to Republican Lou Barletta in Pennsylvania.
Before the election, polls showed a majority of Americans were dissatisfied with the economy, with unemployment near 10% and the deficit at a near-record $1.3 trillion at the end of fiscal 2010.
But anger about the economy wasn’t widespread enough to return the Republicans to the majority in the upper chamber. An early win by Democrat Joe Manchin in West Virginia meant that the Senate was on track to stay in Democrats’ hands.
And the Republican tidal wave steered clear of California, as voters were returning Jerry Brown to the governor’s office and fellow Democrat Barbara Boxer was barely keeping her Senate seat, early returns showed.
The two Democrats took on two former tech titans from Silicon Valley and prevailed. Brown defeated one-time eBay Inc. CEO Meg Whitman in his race, overcoming Whitman’s massive $173 million campaign war chest, $141 million of that coming from her personal fortune. Meanwhile, Boxer edged out ex-Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina for her seat.
Americans worried about the economy and jobs voted in all 50 states Tuesday for all 435 House seats and in 37 Senate races, as well as for 37 governorships.
Rand Paul, an eye doctor and son of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, became the anti-spending tea-party movement’s first senator, and kept a Kentucky Senate seat in the Republican Party. Dan Coats’s victory in Indiana gave Republicans their first pickup of the night; he took the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh.
This is a repost from: Marketwatch
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