In a contentious campaign marked by heavy television advertising, state Sen. David Argall won Tuesday the Republican nomination for a full four-year term in the 29th District.
"It's very good news," Argall said during a celebration at The Restaurant at the Station in Tamaqua.
With all 125 precincts in Schuylkill County, and the majority of precincts in the rest of the district reporting unofficial results, Argall, Rush Township, had 12,474 votes to 10,521 for West Brunswick Township businessman Brian R. Rich.
"It's actually larger than we projected," Argall said. "We're very pleased with the results."
Nearly all of Argall's lead came from Schuylkill County, where he received 8,933 votes to Rich's 7,059.
"Dave got more votes. That's the process," Rich said. "We won all the outlying areas. Schuylkill, unfortunately, we didn't carry."
Schuylkill is the only county entirely in the 29th District, which also includes sections of Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Monroe and Northampton counties.
Tuesday night vote totals showed Rich with more votes than Argall in the Lehigh, Monroe and Northampton sections of the district, but not nearly enough to offset Argall's lead in Schuylkill.
As the winner, Argall will face Washington Township Democrat Tim Seip, a former state representative, in the Nov. 6 General Election. Seip was unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Argall attributed the victory to "a lot of hard work on my part and literally hundreds of volunteers."
He said Rich was "very courteous" in a phone call Tuesday evening, and that they would be speaking again in the next couple weeks.
Rich said he wants Argall to adopt for the future a 401(k) account instead of a pension, propose legislation to have other legislators do the same and prove that he returned the midnight pay raise of 2005 to the state before he would support him in the General Election.
"We highlighted the issues that are going to be undeniable in the future," said Rich, who added that he would be "more active" in politics in the future.
The candidates had traded negative television ads and engaged in extensive direct mailing campaigns.
"The level of acrimony, in terms of the shrill of the campaigning, kind of overshadowed" the issues, Rich said.
Argall won the 29th District seat in a special election on March 3, 2009, defeating Schuylkill County Clerk of Courts Stephen M. Lukach Jr., a Rush Township Democrat, 20,786 votes to 12,551. He was sworn into office March 17, 2009.
The election filled a seat left vacant when voters posthumously re-elected incumbent Republican James J. Rhoades on Nov. 4, 2008. Rhoades, 66, of Mahanoy City, who was first elected to the state Senate in 1980, had died on Oct. 18, 2008, at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest from injuries suffered the night before in an automobile accident in Brodheadsville, Monroe County.
Argall had represented the 124th District in the state House of Representatives since 1985 before running for the state Senate. State Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-124, defeated Democrat Bill Mackey in a special election on May 19, 2009, to succeed Argall, for whom he had worked as an aide, in the state House.
He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2010, losing an all-Schuylkill County race to U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, D-17, Saint Clair.