Harkin, Durbin, Braley cruise to re-election

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By Ed Tibbetts | Wednesday, November 5, 2008 2:05 AM CST | () comments

The Quad-Cities congressional delegation cruised to easy re-election Tuesday, capping one of the less eventful election seasons in recent memory for national legislative offices.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, won 63 percent of Iowa’s vote in capturing a fifth term in office, with 94 percent of precincts reporting late Tuesday.

Unofficial vote totals showed Harkin with 853,285 votes, or 63 percent of the total, while Republican rival, Christopher Reed, a Marion businessman, got 509,495 votes, or about 37 percent.

There was little suspense in this race.

Reed had little money to mount a campaign, while Harkin didn’t even feel the need to engage in traditional campaigning.

The most spark the campaign provided was during a televised debate in the closing days when Reed called Harkin the “Tokyo Rose of Al Qaeda.”

The insult didn’t draw much of a response from Harkin, just an e-mail to supporters that called the comment “vile.”

At a rally in Des Moines, Harkin said that his margin of victory showed he had broad appeal, and not just from Democrats.

“I think that’s fitting, because this election was about overcoming the divisions and the failures of the last eight years, and bringing our nation back together again,” Harkin said.

In Illinois, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also won re-election.

Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, easily defeated Republican Steve Sauerberg, a suburban Chicago physician.

Durbin won a third term, according to The Associated Press.

With 92 percent of precincts reporting late Tuesday, Durbin had 3.2 million votes, or 67 percent of the total, compared with 1.4 million for Sauerberg, or 29 percent.

The win comes at a difficult time for him.

His daughter, Christine, 40, died Saturday from complications of a congenital heart defect.

Durbin’s election night party was canceled, and a statement issued Monday said that the family is in mourning and preparing for her funeral Thursday.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, won a second term with an easy victory Tuesday over Republican David Hartsuch, a state senator from Bettendorf.

Braley got 119,258 votes, or 63 percent of the vote, with 270 of 324 precincts counted, according to unofficial results.

Hartsuch had 68,679, or 37 percent.

This, too, was not much of a campaign.

Like Reed, Hartsuch had little money and had difficulty getting his message out. Braley, meanwhile, held official events across the district but did little in the way of traditional campaigning.

He began Tuesday, as he did in 2006, at the Oscar Mayer plant in Davenport at 5:30 a.m., greeting workers with Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., and legislative candidates Phyllis Thede and state Rep. Elesha Gayman, D-Davenport.

He ended the day in Waterloo, where he said he’d made promises when he first ran to listen, work hard and get things done.

“I think the vote totals speak for themselves that I kept my word,” he said.

Braley’s win was impressive. He beat Hartsuch by a 2-to-1 margin in Dubuque County, was leading by nearly that much with only a handful of precincts to report in Black Hawk County. And in Scott County, the district’s third large urban center, he won the Election Day total by a margin of 24,500 to 20,000 votes.

That did not include absentee and early votes, which accounted for a substantial part of the county totals and that were likely to give the Democrat an even greater advantage.

“The way it's looking, it appears I will be in Des Moines, not Washington,” Hartsuch said at the Republican Party headquarters in Scott County.

For the ease of the other races, however, nobody had it better than Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill.

Hare, who won his first term two years ago, didn’t even have to face anybody on the ballot. Nobody petitioned to be on the Republican ballot, leaving GOP leaders in the district to talk about fielding a candidate. In the end, though, they declined to do so.

A Green Party candidate who had filed papers to run was even removed from the ballot after challenges were filed.

As a result, there was no suspense to the District 17 race. Vote totals for the sprawling district weren’t fully available late Tuesday, but the Rock Island congressman got 53,011 votes out of his home base of Rock Island County.

“I am honored and humbled that my constituents have entrusted me with a second term in Congress,” Hare said Tuesday.

Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.