Republican U.S. Representative Ron Estes held onto his 4th District Congressional seat on Tuesday, narrowly defeating Democratic challenger Katy Tyndell.
In unofficial results, Estes garnered nearly 54% of the vote. The victory marks the incumbent candidate's sixth consecutive term in Congress.
In a victory speech at a Republican watch party in Wichita, Estes said the GOP will continue to fight for Americans.
“There’s so many things that we need to do to continue this process.” Estes said. “It looks like it's going to be a little bit harder over the next two years because we are going to have to deal with more Democrats in the House of Representatives.”
Estes emphasized the current economy and health care prices as focus areas for his next term.
Tyndell shut down her watch party at Chicken N Pickle in east Wichita shortly before final results were reported. She said money from Republican-backed political action committees played a major role in her loss.
“We had SuperPACs throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative attacks at me in the last two weeks of this race, and it's just hard to combat that,” Tyndell said.
She told supporters Tuesday’s results were not the ones she had hoped for, and she criticized Estes for not meeting with voters or agreeing to debate her during the campaign.
“I still think that had he had the courage to show up for a debate, we might've narrowed that gap even more,” Tyndell said.
