(Above: WKRG reports from the campaign headquarters of both Bradley Byrne and Dean Young)
It was supposed to be decided by the slimmest of margins, but in the end it wasn’t really that close.
On Tuesday night, Bradley Byrne defeated Dean Young by a five-point margin and won the Republican nomination in the race to become south Alabama’s next congressman.
He will now be the overwhelming favorite against Democratic nominee Burton LeFlore.
Byrne won by a margin of 38,150-to-34,534 according to the Associated Press. 72,684 voters came out to the polls for the runoff, a much higher turnout than the 52,344 who voted in the primary.
The former chancellor of Alabama’s two year college system congratulated his opponent and offered to work with Young to “unify” the party.
“We had a huge, huge victory tonight,” Byrne said to his supporters Wintzell’s Oyster House in downtown Mobile. “I want to congratulate Dean Young on fighting a hard race and I look forward to working with him over the next several weeks and months as we unify our party, go to Washington and do the hard work for the people of this district and the people of the United States of America.”
However, Young said in his concession speech (which can be viewed in the video above) that he’s not willing to take Byrne up on that offer.
“I cannot bring myself to vote for someone who would mislead the people of south Alabama and the nation like Bradley Byrne has,” Young said at his election night event at Cottages on the Green in Foley. “And he should be ashamed of what he’s done. He should be. And therefore, you know — you reap what you sow and that will follow him — what he’s done and how he mischaracterized who I am and who I’m about. That will follow him.”
The Byrne-Young matchup garnered a lot of attention from the national media who did their best to frame the race as establishment vs. tea party in one of the most solidly Republican districts in the country.
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