Democrat Eric Giddens has been elected to the Iowa Senate.

Giddens was declared the winner Tuesday night for the Senate District 30 seat that represents Cedar Falls, Hudson and parts of Waterloo in northeast Iowa.

The win in a special election race keeps a Senate seat blue and represents a morale boost for Democrats who remain in the minority at the Statehouse in both legislative chambers.

Giddens faced Republican Walt Rogers, who had lost his re-election bid to the Iowa House last November. They also faced Libertarian Fred Perryman.

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The race, which was announced after Jeff Danielson resigned from the Senate last month, focused heavily on education. The district is home to the University of Northern Iowa, one of the state’s three public universities. Giddens is a Cedar Falls school board member and Rogers is the former chair of the education committee in the House.

While there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, there are slightly more independents. The district has leaned Democratic in recent elections, but the special election was scheduled at a time when UNI students were on break. The lack of student-voters worried some Democrats.

A series of Democratic candidates for president campaigned in Iowa for Giddens in the weeks leading up to the election, a series of visits that Giddens called “bizarre” because of the political attention on a small race.

Iowa Republicans tried to make that support a liability for Giddens, whom they framed as standing “arm-in-arm with D.C. socialists.”

Giddens is expected to be sworn in soon. The Legislature is at about the half-way point of its current session.

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