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Allen Concedes in Virginia, giving Democrats control of Senate

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Sen. George Allen (R-VA) today conceded the senatorial race to Democrat James Webb, confirming that there would be a Democratic majority in the Senate and the House for the first time in over a decade.

With this win, the Democrats have now gained more seats in Congress than the Republicans did in the 1994 'Republican Revolution' that first brought Conservatives to control of the House and the Senate.

Webb won the Virginia seat by 7200 votes out of 2.37 million, as reported by the Washington Post. When Allen did not request a recount, that ensured a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Rumor said that Allen had hoped to use his Senate seat as a springboard to a run for the Presidency; and more rumors suggested that if Vice President Dick Cheney were forced to resign ("due to ill health") following investigations of laws broken by Bush and Cheney, that Allen had hoped to be appointed in Cheney's stead. With the loss of the Senate seat, Allen's visions of a Presidential run have become impossible.

Webb, who was a decorated Vietnam veteran and an early opponent of the war in Iraq, is quoted (by atrios at http://atrios.blogspot.com/) as saying that he was particularly concerned with issues of economic fairness and social justice:

"[It was reported] that I came to the Democratic party purely on issues regarding the Iraq war. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I think I and a lot of people like me had aligned themselves with the Republican party on national security issues but were always concerned about issues of economic fairness and social justice."

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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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