Ernst wins Iowa's U.S. Senate seat

DES MOINES — Iowa voters wrote Republican Joni Ernst's name into the state's history books Tuesday, choosing her over Democrat Bruce Braley in a bruising, expensive political slugfest and making her the first woman ever elected in Iowa to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Ernst, 46, an Iowa National Guard officer and military combat veteran, completed her toughest political mission by overcoming Braley's early lead in stunning, come-from-nowhere fashion to win a brutal, expensive and bitterly partisan campaign to replace retiring Democrat Tom Harkin as Iowa's next U.S. senator.

'Iowa, we did it,' Ernst said as she took the podium accompanied by chants of, 'Joni! Joni!'

'It's a long way from Red Oak to Washington, from the biscuit line at Hardees to the United States Senate,' she said.

'We are going to Washington, and we are going to make them squeal.'

Braley congratulated Ernst on her victory and told his supporters, 'I leave here tonight filled with hope and optimism.'

Harkin applauded Braley's effort and told Democrats 'Mark my word, you haven't heard the last of Bruce Braley.'

The Iowa race was viewed as the most-competitive matchup in the nation and a pivotal seat in Republicans' effort to wrest control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats. National liberal and conservative interest groups invested more than $62 million in the race — a record amount of spending on a flood of negative advertising that outpaced the money spent in Iowa for a non-presidential campaign.

Ernst, a former Montgomery County auditor who replaced Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds in the Iowa Senate in 2011, rose from virtual obscurity to win a five-way GOP primary as a Harley-riding, pistol-packing mom, soldier and conservative who promised to bring her Iowa values to a dysfunctional and overspending Senate.

The little-known state senator from southwest Iowa created national buzz with a TV commercial in which she proclaimed she planned to take skills she learned castrating pigs on her family's farm to the nation's Capital where she would 'cut pork' and 'make 'em squeal.'

Ernst softened her conservative views after landing the Republican nomination and proved to be a disciplined, polished candidate with a folksy appeal while Braley — who was unopposed in the Democratic primary — stumbled with a series of gaffes as he ventured outside of his northeast Iowa congressional district for the first time to compete in a statewide race.

Republicans capitalized on a video shot at a Texas fundraiser with trial lawyers in which he is heard and seen mocking popular GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley as 'a farmer from Iowa' who never went to law school, but who could be in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee if Republicans succeeded in taking control of the Senate in the midterm election.

During the campaign, Braley worked to convince Iowa voters that Ernst was too extreme. He said he would work in a bipartisan way to promote issues important to protecting the middle class that would include raising the federal minimum-wage, making college more accessible and affordable, and preserving Social Security and Medicare.

For her part, Ernst focused of shrinking the size of government, lowering taxes, protecting individual freedom, cutting burdensome regulation and repealing the Affordable Care Act.

This year's U.S. Senate election was the first in Iowa without an incumbent since 1968 when Democrat Harold Hughes defeated Republican David Stanley to claim the seat vacated by Republican Bourke Hickenlooper of Cedar Rapids.

The last time Republicans held both of Iowa seats in the U.S. Senate was 1981-85 with Sens. Charles Grassley and Roger Jepsen before Harkin ousted Jepsen in the 1984 election and served for five terms.