(CNN) Rep. Steve King won a ninth term to Congress in his toughest campaign yet, defeating a strong challenge from J.D. Scholten, despite criticism from his own Republican colleagues over his comments this year criticizing diversity in the United States, as well as George Soros, a Jewish billionaire and Democratic donor.

With 99% of precincts reporting, CNN projected King won the deeply conservative district with 50.6% of the vote to 46.8% for his Democratic challenger JD Scholten. In 2016, King cruised to victory with over 61% of the vote.

Last month, The Washington Post reported that King questioned the value of diversity in an interview with Unzensuriert, "a publication associated with Austria's Freedom Party, which was founded by a former Nazi SS officer and is now led by Heinz-Christian Strache, who was active in neo-Nazi circles as a youth." The Post noted that, "the party has distanced itself from those connections" but "recently embraced a hard-line anti-immigration stance while seeking ties with other far-right parties and leaders abroad."

In the interview, King said, "diversity is not a strength" and asked, "what does it bring that we don't have that is worth the price?"

King suggested in the same interview that Soros has propped up a range of liberal causes and speculated that he may have funded the Women's March.

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