Democratic candidate Liz Mathis won the $1 million special Iowa Senate race Tuesday, allowing her party to retain control of the chamber.
Democrats will maintain a 26-24 edge through the 2012 legislative session. Republicans had hoped for a 25-25 tie and the potential opportunity to move forward on now-gridlocked priorities, such as a move to begin the process to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa.
... Unofficial counts show that Mathis received 56 percent of the vote in one of the most expensive races in legislative history. Small business owner Cindy Golding, a Republican, received 44 percent. Third-party candidate Jon Tack received 1 percent.
Republicans for weeks have said one of their biggest challenges in the race was competing against Mathis’ name recognition.
... Nearly $1 million was raised for the race as of last Friday. Mathis raised $690,036 in both cash and in-kind contributions, while Golding raised a total of $250,325, reports released Tuesday showed.
11 Comments
Unfortunately the Iowa GOP proffered a very weak candidate. We should have known better. Next year will be a different kettle of fish with stronger GOP candidates and a GOP landslide dumping SS*m* to the dustbin of history.
Note that this was the last election with old district lines,there is already a declared candidate for the new district.
It's difficult to overcome the fact that Ms. Mathis is a local celebrity. The election results are less indicative of voter values than they are of voter recognition.
Too bad, but 2012 is right around the corner.
It also didn't help that the Iowa republican senate leadership is in disarray right now:
http://theiowarepublican.com/2011/how-republicans-missed-a-golding-opportunity/
The dems will try to paint this as a victory for "SSM", but Mathis likely won in spite of her position on the issue.
According to polling by democratc leaning PPP, more people in the district were actually opposed to "SSM" than in support of it.
Excuses, excuses. Funny that none of these bogus arguments came to light earlier, especially since NOM was so convinced that Iowans really really wanted to do away with marriage equality.
And next year y'all will be saying "too bad, but 2013 is right around the corner." Yadda, yadda, yadda...
It looks like marriage equality is here to stay in Iowa for the foreseeable future!
LOL oh NOM, you were so confident going into this election...you spent so much money, and resources, and predicted a victory. You decisively lost, and now you offer excuses....what a joke
Chris,the "equality" idiots had a lot more money than Golding.
When it came to voting directly on same sex marriage, the people of California voted against it.
Shortly afterwards they voted for Jerry Brown as governor, who is for same sex marriage.
There can be a logical disconnect between the will of the people on marriage and the candidates they elect, it seems.
We might see the same thing for Iowa once they directly vote on the issue.
Not such a disconnect. California is a fairly liberal state and tends to elect fairly liberal legislators and governors. There are any number of reasons why the people of California voted against same-sex marriage, but the fact remains that Prop. 8 won by a very narrow margin, with just 7 million of "the people" determining state marriage law in a state with 37 million people. (Heck, 7 million isn't even a majority of registered voters.) And it's quite possible--even likely--that if the vote were held today it would come out differently.