Todd Spangler and Kat Stafford

Detroit Free Press

Former state Rep. Rashida Tlaib easily won the race to be the full-term replacement for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, who resigned from office 11 months ago.

The Associated Press called the race about 10:30 p.m. as Tlaib had more than 90 percent of the vote with half of the ballots tallied.

At a gathering of supporters who ranged from family members to volunteers and community activists, Tlaib declared victory late Tuesday and said she's ready to get to work for the residents in her district.

"I'm a different kind of public servant," Tlaib told the Free Press, as several supporters stopped to congratulate her. "I do activism work here at home. I grew up in a community that founded the labor rights movement. So much of your representation is so disconnected with what’s happening here at home. So people are going to see that connection again. ... Being there (in Congress) is going to be important so that my residents feel like they have a seat at the table but also someone with a lot of courage to stand up and speak up."

Tlaib, who won the August primary, had been the odds-on favorite to win the full term in the predominantly Democratic Wayne County district, despite a last-minute write-in effort launched by Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, who won a special election to fill out the brief two months remaining in Conyers' term.

By winning, Tlaib, when she is sworn into office in early January, will become the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to Congress and one of two Muslim women elected to the U.S. House.

No Republican candidate qualified for the ballot in the predominately Democratic district.

The 13th Congressional District includes midtown Detroit and stretches out through the city's east and west sides — without including the downtown riverfront or the Grosse Pointes — with one portion stretching Downriver and another swinging west and south into Dearborn Heights, Redford Township, Inkster, Romulus and other communities.

Jones' late decision to run a write-in campaign injected an element of surprise into the race, which had been a foregone conclusion and seemed to frustrate Democratic officials — especially after she appeared on stage with Tlaib at a rally featuring former President Barack Obama.

But Jones told reporters at City Hall a week before the election that her decision to run as a write-in was the result of constituents' concerns about electoral integrity in the August primary when online vote totals seemed to fluctuate on a night when the Wayne County Clerk's website went down during the tally.

County voting officials have said that those online display fluctuations had nothing to do with the accuracy of the actual vote tally or the outcome, however, which had Tlaib defeating Jones by 900 votes.

Also complicating matters for some observers was the fact that Jones' defeat in the nomination for the full term was at odds with her winning the race for the Democratic nomination to serve out the short remainder of Conyers' term.

Jones beat Tlaib for that nomination by 1,648 votes. But it was clear from the vote totals that Tlaib was able to win the nomination for the full term — at least in part — because of a larger six-person field that further split the vote. Jones, meanwhile, was able to win in a smaller four-person field for the nomination for the partial term.

Although Tlaib declared victory, she said she had not spoken with any opponent late Tuesday. Jones could not be immediately reached Tuesday night for comment.

In the weeks and months following the primary, Tlaib — who calls herself a Democratic socialist and who was running to represent a district long associated with black urban America — had received national media attention, both for her status as a potential record-setting candidate and as someone who has routinely taken on developers and the establishment in Detroit in one of the most impoverished congressional districts in the nation.

Over the years, Tlaib has not shied away from confrontation, at one point being part of a group that stopped trucks coming off the Ambassador Bridge over concerns that they were being re-routed through streets in southwest Detroit where she grew up. In another incident she was led out of the Detroit Economic Club in 2016 after shouting at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump that the nation’s children “deserve better” than him and that given his remarks, about Muslims and about immigrants, he should read the Constitution.

And Tlaib said her constituents should continue to expect her to push back against the current administration on certain issues.

"I'm going to speak truth to power," Tlaib said. "I obviously have a set agenda that's not going to be a priority for the current president but that doesn't mean I'm not going to push back and make sure I find some alliances on both sides of the aisle."

Jones, on the other hand, had much of the establishment support going into the Democratic primary, though Tlaib had out-raised her and appeared to have momentum on her side.

The district came open last December, when Conyers, now 89, stepped down amid controversy over claims that he had harassed and otherwise mistreated women staffers over the years. But Gov. Rick Snyder, rather than scheduling a vote to replace him quickly, decided to leave the seat open for most of a year — scheduling a vote to fill out his final term with the regular primary and general election dates.

Conyers — who had represented Detroit since 1965 — denied the claims but resigned, giving his endorsement to his son, John Conyers III, to replace him.

But John Conyers III failed to make the Democratic ballot. A cousin, state Sen. Ian Conyers, D-Detroit, also ran but failed to win in a Democratic field that besides Jones and Tlaib included state Sen. Coleman Young II, former state Rep. Shanelle Jackson and Westland Mayor Bill Wild.

Even after winning the nomination for the partial term, there remained questions about Jones' ability to serve, however, since it was unclear she could do that while remaining a member of Detroit City Council.

The U.S. House Ethics Committee had been expected to issue advice, if necessary, on that question — though it was believed that the city could potentially make arrangements for Jones to serve in congress for several weeks without losing her spot in City Hall as long as she wasn't paid by the city during that time.

Read more:

How Detroit's Rashida Tlaib will make history in Washington

Rashida Tlaib 'probably not' going to support Nancy Pelosi as speaker

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.