congressman and their previous runs for office

[freepcrusher]

I always find it interesting how a lot of congressman and senators tried for other offices and failed before getting to their current office. Here are some examples

- Henry Hyde ran for the NW Chicago seat (IL 11) and narrowly lost to incumbent Roman Pucinski
- Jack Murtha ran against John Saylor in 1968 and lost by a 15 point margin but when Saylor died, ran for the seat and won
- Bob Latta ran for OH 5 when his father retired in 1988 but didn't win it until the seat became open again nineteen years later
- Barbara Mikulski and Harry Reid lost in one of the better dem years (1974) but still managed to win the same seat later on
- Dan Burton was the candidate for IN 11 (a smaller version of IN 7) in 1970
- Mark Warner (maybe due to name mixeup) came surprisingly close to knocking off John Warner in 1996

[Where's the Epstein Client List?]

It seems like people could get away with losing a race and then convincing their party to give them another shot at it after a cycle or two. Nowadays, if you ran for senate or governor and lost, you're automatically old news and forgotten about. The exceptions are the people who were essentially their party's only candidate on the bench for a given office (Bobby Jindal, Pat McCrory).

[Zioneer]

It's really interesting how some failed candidates seem to gain experience and sometimes name recognition from losing an election, while others fall into obscurity.

[Democrats Hate Leftists More Than Predators]

I don't know about the rest of the country, but it definitely isn't common at all to run again after getting beat. The Senate and House benches are pretty much perpetually thin because there are so many state representatives. Actually, 3 out of the 4 current delegates from New Hampshire won on their second run.

Carol Shea-Porter used to represent CD-1 (my congressional district) from 2006-2010 until she got beat by about 12%. That didn't stop her from running and she won by about three in 2012.
Annie Kuster won by 5% after losing to Charlie Bass by 3% (interesting note, he came back in 2010 after being beaten by Paul Hodes by 7 in 2006).
Jeanne Shaheen lost to John Sununu by 4% in 2002, but she turned around and beat him in 2008 by 7%.

And Kelly Ayotte won on her first try.