(Updates with details)
By Susan Guyett
INDIANAPOLIS, Nov 6 (Reuters) – Democrats gained a U.S.
Senate seat in Indiana that had been in Republican hands for
decades after the Republican candidate blundered by calling
pregnancy from rape something God intended.
Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly beat Republican state
treasurer Richard Mourdock Tuesday. The seat is currently held
by Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who lost a bruising primary
to Mourdock this past spring.
Donnelly is considered a moderate, anti-abortion Democrat.
He voted for President Barack Obama’s health reforms but does
not always vote with Republicans.
The outcome is a severe blow to Republicans, who needed a
net gain of four seats to take a majority in the U.S. Senate.
Support for Mourdock fell after he said in an Oct. 23 debate
that pregnancy resulting from rape was “something God intended
to happen.” Mourdock said rape should not be an exception to the
abortion ban.
Other remarks by Republican candidates on rape also have
stirred controversy. In Missouri, Republican senate candidate
Todd Akin prompted an uproar by saying women’s bodies have
defenses against pregnancy after “legitimate rape.”
Mourdock also was hit by Democrats attacking his “extreme”
Tea Party movement views – lower taxes, fewer regulations and
massive spending cuts – plus his televised remarks after the
primary that “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats
coming to the Republican point of view.”
“Mourdock didn’t help himself after the primary by taking a
very hard line,” said Marjorie Hershey, a politics professor at
the University of Indiana.
Mourdock’s strong conservative base enabled him to defeat
Lugar, first elected in 1976, in the Republican primary.
Lugar was re-elected repeatedly with the help of Democrats
and independents who admired his record of bipartisanship and
foreign policy expertise that included helping to decommission
some of the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union.
One factor that may have helped Donnelly is that Lugar has
stayed away, telling an Indianapolis blogger in September: “I
have not been a factor in the campaign, and I do not intend to
do so.”
Donnelly will be the first Democratic U.S. Senator from
Indiana not named “Bayh” since Vance Hartke left office in 1977;
Democrat Birch Bayh was in the Senate from 1963 until 1981 and
son Evan Bayh held the seat from 1999 to 2011.
(Reporting By Susan Guyett, David Dawson and Nick Carey;
Editing by Mary Wisniewski, Greg McCune and Ciro Scotti)
