Republican Mike Rounds wins U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota: CNN
By Todd Epp SIOUX FALLS S.D. (Reuters) - Republican Mike Rounds has won the U.S. Senate seat in a three-way race in South Dakota, Reuters/Ipsos projected on Tuesday, a crucial gain for Republicans as they clinched control of the chamber. Rounds, 60, a former governor of the state, defeated former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler, who ran as an independent, and Democrat Rick Weiland, a one-time aide to former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle. Rounds will succeed retiring Democratic Senator Tim Johnson. "There is a message out there that I got no matter where I went: it was a message of hope, it was a message of belief," Rounds told supporters. When Rounds declared his candidacy two years ago, South Dakota political analysts expected the popular governor who served two terms to have little problem winning the race. Opponents criticized Rounds in the primary and general election over his former administration’s handling of a state program that allows foreign investors to earn green cards by providing $500,000 of investments for job-creating projects. The attacks worked for a time, closing the gap to within a few percentage points in late September. But heavy advertising spending by the national Republican Senate campaign committee supported Rounds. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee also made campaign appearances for Rounds, who had a substantial campaign war chest and recaptured his double-digit leads over Pressler and Weiland. "We may have lost this campaign at the polls today, but I feel that we have won by running to end the poisonous gridlock in Washington and incorporating South Dakota issues into the race," Pressler said. Rounds, an insurance executive from Pierre, campaigned on bringing "South Dakota common sense" to Washington, support for the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline and opposition to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. (Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney and Eric Walsh)
