Election Feature: Columbia reps re-elected
Ed Robb, Jeff Harris and Judy Baker were re-elected to the state House.
Published Nov. 8, 2006
Despite months of campaigning by the challengers, the three districts whose representatives serve Columbia in the Missouri House of Representatives all voted Tuesday to re-elect their incumbent candidates.
The hotly contested race for the 24th District state representative seat between Republican incumbent Rep. Ed Robb and Democratic challenger Jim Ritter finished as tightly as it began, with Robb as the victor.
"It was a long night, but I'm very happy with the outcome," Robb said.
The tallies showed a close race the entire night while candidates and supporters watched feverishly as the votes poured in.
The absentee votes rolled in, accounting for a quarter of the precincts.
Robb led by a small margin after the first count. Ritter had only 18 fewer votes than Robb.
"It looks pretty back and forth right now," Ritter said at the time. "We have a long night ahead of us."
Ritter briefly held a lead until the gap was closed, and both candidates were forced to wait for the totals of every precinct to come in.
When the votes were finally tallied, Robb won by less than 1 percent of the vote and gave his acceptance speech to a crowd of excited fans.
In his speech, Robb said his main goal was to bring home the money from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority sale.
Ritter called Robb immediately after the votes were totaled and congratulated him on a great race.
Ritter said he would likely not run for the Missouri state legislature again.
The 23rd District also voted to re-elect its incumbent candidate. Rep. Jeff Harris, the House minority leader, was elected to serve a third term.
Harris was up against Republican Patrick Crabtree, a newcomer to politics.
Crabtree said he waited until the last day to file for candidacy.
He said he hadn't planned on running this year and was going to wait until 2008.
Crabtree said he still plans to run in 2008 and hopes the name recognition from Tuesday's election will help him.
Harris declined to comment on whether he'd run again in the 23rd District in 2008, instead focusing on the present.
"We just feel very blessed," Harris said. "The numbers reflect that this community believes in us."
Rep. Judy Baker, the Democratic incumbent in the 25th District, was also re-elected to the state House. She will be serving a second term.
Baker ran unopposed and said that running unopposed is the way she would prefer to run, but she said she would have enjoyed addressing the issues publicly with an opponent.
Baker said she hopes to make both health care and education more affordable during the upcoming term.
"This is a time in Missouri that we need to address poverty in our state," she said.
She said she is also hoping that new seniority will help her to meet these goals.