FOXNews.com: Akin Wins GOP Senate Primary to Face McCaskill

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Akin Wins GOP Senate Primary to Face McCaskill Aug 8th 2012, 06:08 JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. –  Congressman Todd Akin has won a hard-fought Republican primary for the right to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. Akin on Tuesday topped businessman John Brunner and former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman in a primary in which all three leading candidates portrayed themselves as the top conservative choice. McCaskill was unopposed in the Democratic primary. The 65-year-old Akin first won election to a suburban St. Louis seat in the U.S. House in 2000 after narrowly prevailing in a five-way Republican primary. He campaigned for Senate by highlighting that he was once ranked as the most conservative member of Missouri's congressional delegation. Akin may have also gained some support from McCaskill, who ran a TV ad focused on Akin's conservative credentials while concluding he is too conservative. McCaskill, 59, is seeking a second six-year term in the Senate to cap a lengthy political resume that includes time spent as state auditor, a state lawmaker and a county prosecutor in the Kansas City area.  Because they agree on most issues, the Republican candidates had sought to distinguish themselves by emphasizing their personal backgrounds, obtaining competing endorsements and casting doubt on whether others could be trusted to carry out the conservative cause.  Brunner, 60, is the former CEO and chairman of Vi-Jon Inc., which makes Germ-X hand sanitizer and other personal health care products. He poured more than $7.5 million into his campaign to finance ads that touted his manufacturing experience and cast Akin and Steelman as "career politicians."  He also benefited from millions more spent on advertising by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has the support of a conservative political organization, FreedomWorks for America.  Steelman, 54, trumpeted the endorsement of the Tea Party Express and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. In a TV ad, Palin described Steelman as an economist "who defends our tax dollars like a momma grizzly defends her cubs." A former Missouri treasurer and state senator, Steelman loaned her campaign several hundred thousand dollars and was aided by a political committee that spent several hundred thousand more on ads attacking Brunner's conservative credentials.  Akin, 65, decided to run for Senate instead of seeking a seventh term in Congress.  He frequently highlighted the fact that he was rated as Missouri's most conservative member in Congress, and his campaign commercials have featured the praise of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a presidential candidate in 2008. Akin also refrained from running negative ads.

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