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Landrieu is defeated in Senate runoff in Louisiana

 
Sen. Mary Landrieu was seeking a fourth term in the runoff.
Sen. Mary Landrieu was seeking a fourth term in the runoff.
Published Dec. 7, 2014

BATON ROUGE, La. — Mary Landrieu, the last Deep South Democrat in the U.S. Senate, was defeated in a runoff election Saturday by Bill Cassidy, a Republican congressman who incessantly attacked the incumbent for her support of President Barack Obama.

With Cassidy holding more than 60 percent of the vote, the Associated Press called the victory for him shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. in what had been the last undecided Senate race of the midterm elections. The Republicans gained a total of nine Senate seats in this cycle, giving them 54 senators and firm control of the upper chamber when the 114th Congress convenes in January.

For Democrats, Saturday's outcome was yet another sobering reminder of their party's declining prospects in the South, a region they dominated for much of the 20th century. Landrieu was the last statewide elected Democrat in Louisiana, and Cassidy will join a fellow Louisiana Republican, David Vitter, in the Senate, making it the first time in 138 years that a Democrat from the state has not sat in the Senate.

Speaking to supporters at the Crowne Plaza Hotel here, Cassidy said, "This victory happened because people in Louisiana voted for a government which serves us but does not tell us what to do. Thank y'all."

Even though Landrieu narrowly edged out Cassidy in a multicandidate primary in November, his victory was widely expected. A second conservative candidate with a significant following, Rob Maness, ran a strong third in the primary, and subsequently endorsed Cassidy.

As in much of the South, Louisiana has seen many white Democrats defect to the GOP. Compounding Democrats' problems was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which forced roughly 125,000 reliably Democratic voters to permanently relocate to other states.