Hultgren defeats Foster in 14th Congressional District

Republican Randy Hultgren pulled away to a 7 percentage point lead roughly halfway through ballot counting and never looked back Tuesday night. Hultgren maintained that margin while building momentum. Soon it was time for Democratic incumbent Bill Foster to concede the 14th Congressional District race.

In victory, Hultgren rode a wave of Republican support throughout the country on election night.

With 100 percent of the precincts in for the 14th Congressional District race, Hultgren beat Foster by 14,016 votes, according to unofficial totals. Hultgren finished with 111,808 votes to Foster's 97,792 votes.

Hultgren sent out a statement on his victory shortly after receiving Foster's concession just before 10 p.m. Tuesday.

“Our victory tonight was a testament to our American resolve for freedom, entrepreneurship, limited government, low taxes and economic growth,” Hultgren said.

“This was also an important victory for the people of the 14th District. Despite millions of dollars of negative ads, our community rejected the negative politics of fear and lies and focused on the issues of job creation and economic growth.”

Foster's spokeswoman Shannon O'Brien said she thought Foster had done enough to win the confidence of voters, but it just didn't pan out on Election Day.

“For awhile it was looking very promising,” O'Brien said. “We're really proud of the campaign. And we really believe Bill Foster was an independent voice for the 14th Congressional District.”

Speaking for himself, Foster pointed to the numerous Republican victories around the country, and misplaced blame, as the reasons for his defeat.

“It was a national wave of frustration,” Foster said. “One unfortunate truth about politics is if one party messes up the economy bad enough, and then hands it over to the other party, the party coming into power ends up taking the blame.”

Foster said he'll take a vacation to think about his next move. Looking back at his time in Congress, Foster said he's most proud of his vote for health care reform.

“I think it's going to be much more difficult to get rid of the core provisions of that reform than Republicans are pretending it's going to be,” Foster said.

Green Party candidate Dan Kairis appeared to be a possible spoiler early in the race, but ended with about 7,892 votes.