In a display of Republican Party muscle, Rep. Bill Goodling, 70, fended off a challenge Tuesday night from an insurgent conservative.
The 12-term congressman kept his seat despite a heavily financed challenge from Charles Gerow in the GOP primary in south-central Pennsylvania.
Gerow had staged the most threatening challenge to any Republican incumbent so far this year and the biggest scare to any committee chairman–he heads the Education and Workforce Committee–since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994.
Party leaders were alarmed by Gerow’s aggressive media campaign, financed by outside groups, and sent in the troops to beef up and modernize Goodling’s typically lax approach.
Goodling said late Tuesday that the effort by a pro-term-limits group based in Wisconsin to overthrow him had backfired.
Goodling won 67 percent of the vote in a four-person race.
Results of primary elections elsewhere Tuesday:
– In Oregon, disgraced former Republican Rep. Wes Cooley failed in his attempt at a comeback in his rural district, finishing third in a four-way race. Cooley was seeking to reclaim the seat he abandoned two years ago after it was revealed he had lied about fighting in the Korean War.
– Voters in Pennsylvania’s 1st District, which includes part of Philadelphia, chose Bob Brady, the city’s Democratic chairman, to replace Democratic Rep. Tom Foglietta, who resigned to become U.S. ambassador to Italy.
