POLITICO Pro Republican McSally wins last House race of 2014 The race for Gabrielle Giffords’ former Ariz. seat had gone to a recount.

Republican Martha McSally has prevailed in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District over Democratic Rep. Ron Barber following a recount after initial vote totals showed McSally ahead by fewer than 200 votes.

Results unveiled Wednesday by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper — more than six weeks after the Nov. 4 election — showed McSally ahead by 167 votes. McSally, a retired Air Force officer and the first female to fly in combat, previously led the vote count by 161 votes, but a mandatory recount followed because the margin was not wide enough.


“There’s no getting around that this was an incredibly close and hard-fought race,” McSally said in a statement after officially being declared the winner. “After what’s been a long campaign season, it’s time to come together and heal our community. That’s why my focus will be on what unites us, not what divides us, such as providing better economic opportunity for our families and ensuring our country and community are kept safe.”

McSally’s win adds to the GOP’s historic 2014 gains in the House. When the new Congress convenes in January, Republicans will control 247 House seats, compared to 188 for Democrats.

( Full 2014 election results)

The results come after a federal judge rejected a request from the Barber campaign to count 133 additional votes that the Democrat believed to have been improperly rejected.

“This result is not the one we hoped for, but we take solace in having spoken out loud and clear for the principle that every legal vote should be counted,” Barber said in a statement Wednesday. “As in every election system, there are imperfections in ours, and we must work to correct them. When an election is as close as this one has been, we do our best to arrive at the correct result, and then accept it with respect for the voters.”

Barber, who survived a 2011 massacre in Tucson while serving as an aide to then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, portrayed himself as a moderate in the swing district, while his opponent and allied GOP groups linked him to President Barack Obama and the gridlock in Washington, hitting him on his votes to keep the Affordable Care Act.

Barber was first elected to Congress in 2012 after Giffords resigned to focus on her recovery.

Giffords’ gun-control group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, spent more than $2 million on Barber’s behalf, including a 60-second TV ad in October that featured Giffords, who still has trouble with her speech. “Ron Barber is independent, he’s courageous, and most of all he’s Arizona through and through,” she said in the ad.

The National Rifle Association used McSally’s win Wednesday to argue that midterm voters had rejected gun-control groups’ agenda nationwide in 2014.

“Martha stood on principle and supported our constitutional freedoms, despite being relentlessly attacked by the gun control movement,” said Chris W. Cox, chairman of the NRA Political Victory Fund, in a statement. “Michael Bloomberg and national anti-gun groups were dealt a significant blow by Second Amendment supporters across the country on election day. A clear takeaway from these elections is that voters do not support Michael Bloomberg’s extreme anti-gun agenda.”

McSally lost to Barber in 2012 by roughly 2,500 votes and was touted by Republicans as a top recruit early in the 2014 cycle.

The Southern Arizona district, which both Mitt Romney and John McCain narrowly won at the presidential level, saw more than $10 million overall in outside spending from both sides.