Incumbents Fall As GOP Takes Back the Iowa House –Unofficially Win a 58 to 42 Majority

Some huge, huge wins happened last night at Republicans rolled to win back the majority in the House.  Iowa House Republican Leader Kraig Paulsen announced that Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy called him up to talk about changing offices.

Currently if all races stand as is the Republicans will have 58 seats, Democrats 42.  No Republican incumbent lost, and Republicans held onto all but one of their open seats – House District 51 (formerly held by Representative Rod Roberts).  Eleven Democratic incumbents lost their seats last night.

A big giant killer in my book – Iowa House District 42 saw Kim Pearson defeat long-term incumbent Representative Geri Huser with a little more than 1% of the vote.  Huser had won the endorsement of The National Rifle Association, Iowa Farm Bureau, and Iowans for Tax Relief.  Pearson was the tea party favorite and also had been endorsed by Mike Huckabee earlier in the race.  Pearson proved to be a tough and tenacious campaigner.  There could still be a recount in this race with Pearson only having a 159 vote edge with all precincts reporting.

Other House Districts where other Democratic incumbents fell:

• House District 9: Stuart Iverson, Jr. defeated Representative McKinley Bailey
• House District 20: Walt Rogers defeated Representative Doris Kelley
• House District 23: Dan Rasmussen defeated Representative Gene Ficken (only 206 votes separate)
• House District 31: Lee Hein defeated Representative Ray Zirkelbach
• House District 48: Chip Baltimore defeated Representative Donovan Olson (only 28 votes)
• House District 75: Guy Vander Linden defeated Representative Eric Palmer.
• House District 80: Mark Lofgren defeated Representative Nathan Reichert
• House District 89: Jared Klein defeated Representative Larry Marek
• House District 95: Joel Fry defeated Representative Michael Reasoner
• House District 100: Mark Brandenberg defeated Representative Paul Shomshor

Republicans won four open seats formerly held by Democrats:

• House District 1: Jeremy Taylor defeated David Alan Dawson (formerly held by Wes Whitead)
• House District 8: Tom Shaw defeated Susan Bangert (formerly held by Dolores Mertz)
• House District 14: Josh Byrnes defeated Kurt Meyer (former held by Mark Kuhn)
• House District 84: Ross Paustian defeated Sheri Carnahan (formerly held by Elesha Gayman)

Other open seats won by Republicans (that were formerly held by Republicans):

• House District 54: Ron Jorgensen defeated Carlos Venable-Ridley (formerly held by Chris Rants)
• House District 73: Julian Garrett defeated Tim Pierce (formerly held by Jodi Tymeson)
• House District 74: Glen Massie defeated Scott Ourth (formerly held by Kent Sorenson)
• House District 99: Mary Ann Hanusa defeated Kurt Hubler (formerly held by Doug Struyk)

As it stands now this looks like a landslide.