Democrat Ron Barber has won a special House election in southern Arizona to finish the term of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, The Associated Press projected.
Giffords, who was critically injured in a Jan. 2011 event in her district, resigned earlier this year.
A former aide to Giffords, Barber, who was also injured in the attack outside a supermarket that left six dead and 12 others injured, faced a challenge from Jesse Kelly, a Republican who narrowly lost to Giffords in the 2010 midterm elections.
The campaign was imbued with emotions that still linger from the attack, which forced Giffords’s retirement – despite remarkable progress toward recovery – earlier this year. But the special election campaign has also assumed a degree of political significance, given each party’s aggressive efforts to win the seat.
By Michael O’Brien, msnbc.com
Posted by Libergirl
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