The Huffington Post reports Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) isn't coming back to Congress.
After months of battling through one of the nastiest and most expensive races in the country, the Tea Party freshman was knocked out of his seat, barely, by Democratic newcomer Patrick Murphy.It was a tight race all night, which paralleled the razor-thin margins polls showed between the candidates over the past few months. West and Murphy were competing for Florida's 18th Congressional District, an evenly split district that was redrawn in 2010.
West pitched himself as a military veteran who spent his first term in Congress voting to deregulate government, create jobs and overhaul Medicare as a way to preserve it.
Murphy, a construction company owner who struggled for name recognition among voters, ran a campaign built almost entirely on the message that he is the antithesis to West's better-known reputation: that of a party extremist known for saying offensive things to or about Democrats.
