Martha McSally Wins Arizona Congressional Race by 167 Votes
Published at
McSally for Congress(WASHINGTON) — Six weeks after Election Day, the lone Congressional race left uncalled has been decided.
Republican Martha McSally, a former Air Force colonel, has defeated Rep. Ron Barber in the race for Arizona’s 2nd Congressional district seat, once held by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. She beat her two-time opponent by just 167 votes.
On Wednesday, an Arizona judge put to rest what’s been a historic nail-biter of a rematch — one so close it called for an automatic recount. The initial ballot count of the nearly 220,000 ballots in the district showed the congresswoman-elect ahead by a measly 161 votes. State law requires a candidate to win by more than McSally’s razor-thin margin of .08 percent.
McSally’s now final 167-ballot edge still makes for an equally stunning result to what seemed at times to be the race that wouldn’t end.
Barber was able to best McSally by roughly 2,500 votes in their first faceoff in 2012. At the time, this was considered the slightest of victories; however, compared to the newly-elected representative’s miniscule winning margin in 2014, that number now seems quite large.
The recount didn’t stop McSally from declaring victory after the first ballot count results were announced, nor from getting two impressive Capitol Hill committee assignments last week.
The first female to fly in combat, McSally is on the roster for the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee come January. She’s served abroad in the Middle East in wars and military operations. Though McSally has no formal political experience, she is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Though she picked up six votes in the recount process, McSally maintains a winning margin so low it still falls in the below .10 percent recount territory.
It was a closely watched race for many reasons, among them Barber’s relationship with his close friend and former boss, Gabby Giffords.
Giffords asked Barber to run to replace her upon deciding to retire in 2012. Barber was her district director at the time of the deadly 2011 Tucson shooting that gravely injured the former congresswoman, and sustained gunshot wounds, too.
Though Giffords did not do any in-person campaigning alongside with Barber, she appeared in two on-camera ads touting the outgoing congressman. She also sponsored several aggressive ads through her PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, attacking McSally on gun violence prevention measures she failed to support.
Even still, it was not enough for Barber to defend the seat of his former boss this time around. He joins a pack of Democrats who experienced historic defeats this election.
After clobbering Democrats in the 2014 midterms, McSally’s win means the GOP now boasts another historic achievement: Their single largest House majority since the onset of the Great Depression.
Previously tied with the 246-seat majority achieved by Republicans in 1946, the victory pushes the party just over the edge to achieve their greatest majority since 1929-31, when Republicans controlled 270 seats under President Herbert Hoover — making it the GOP’s third highest congressional majority.
The 270-seat record is largely considered the high water mark for Republicans, and is second only to the 302 Republicans elected to the 67th Congress in 1920.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio