Minnis retains her seat in Oregon House

STATE LEGISLATURE: Metsger, Riley, McPherson, Smith all leading

By Erin Shea

LocalNewsDaily.com, Nov 8, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Shanda Tice / The Outlook

Ahead in the preliminary results, Rob Brading reacts with excitement and emotion during a speech in which he almost forgot to thank his wife at Edgefield on Tuesday.

Oregon Rep. Karen Minnis has retained her seat in the state House.

On Thursday morning, Minnis had 51.92 percent, compared with Democratic challenger Rob Brading's 47.52 percent.

Because the Democrats won enough seats to take control of the house, Minnis will no longer be House speaker.

As the first election results were released Tuesday night, a crowd gathered around a small television and a handful of laptops scattered throughout the McMenamins Edgefield Ballroom on Tuesday night.

A small cheer erupted. Brading was in the lead for the District 49 race with 51 percent of the votes, but less than half of the votes were counted.

“We’re really encouraged by the early results,” said Riley Caton, former Gresham fire chief and Brading supporter. “We think it’s time for a change, and that Rob will do very well in the Legislature.”

Although early numbers showed him leading, Brading was cautious in his response to the results.

“Being ahead is certainly better than being behind,” he said, “But we believe it will be a close race.”

By Wednesday morning, the lead switched to Minnis, although the race was still too close to call.

“I’m still optimistic, so … we’ll see how events unfold ...,” Minnis said. “I think that traditionally Democrats vote early, so I am pleased with where we are at.”

Brading ran against Minnis in the 2004 election and lost by 1,524 votes.

In other state legislative races, Democrat Brad Avakian easily beat out Republican Piotr Kuklinski for the state Senate District 17 seat and Democrat Richard Devlin cruised past the GOP's David Newell to win the 19th Senate District.

In the 27th House District, Tobias Read, a Democrat, defeated Dominic Biggi, a Republican and in the 35th District, Democrate Larry Galizio held off Republican Shirley Parsons.

At the Democratic victory party at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Read said he thought his victory "means that people are interested in the same issues we've been talking about — growing the economy and helping the environment."

In other races:

Senate District 15

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