Republicans earned their first pick-up of the election Tuesday when Rep. Shelley Moore Capito easily won West Virginia’s Senate seat, in a race where Democrats all but conceded months ago.
Networks projected a win soon after the polls closed at 7:30 p.m. EST for Ms. Capito, a popular congresswoman who began a GOP trend in the state more than a decade ago.
She took the seat of Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, a Democrat who’d served for five terms but announced he would retire as the state trended toward the GOP. He would have had a tough re-election.
Democrats nominated Natalie Tennant, the secretary of state, to run for the seat but the national party never put much effort into the race, making her an early casualty of triage as they sought to defend incumbents in other races.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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