GOP chairman defeats Tea Party-backed opponent

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) is projected to beat his tea party-backed challenger Art Halvorson, putting an end to one of the more unusual House races this election cycle.

{mosads}Although there was no public polling on the race and Shuster was expected to prevail, both candidates were running as if it were competitive, with legal action and love lives being dragged into the fight just weeks before Election Day.

Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, had already beaten Halvorson in this year’s primary and before, in 2014 for Pennsylvania’s 9th district.

But after losing the primary by a slim margin this year, Halvorson earned enough write-in votes to run on the Democratic ticket in the general election.  In a largely unprecedented move, Halvorson opted to run as a Democrat while vowing to serve as a Republican in Congress.

Halvorson was heavily outspent and faced an uphill battle in mobilizing GOP voters in the district – one of the reddest in the state – to vote for him on the same ticket as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

His campaign claimed that Shuster’s camp was sending out mailers to Republican voters labeling Halvorson as a left-wing liberal.

Shuster also had the advantage of name recognition in the district, which has been represented by a Shuster since the 1970s. Before Bill Shuster came to Congress in 2001, his father Bud represented the area for nearly three decades.