President Obama was re-elected on Tuesday night, and he will also retain the distinction of being the highest-elected academic in the country. Mr. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for more than a decade before being elected to the U.S. Senate, in 2004.
Aside from Mr. Obama, in Congressional and state races across the country, a handful of candidates with connections to higher education were on the ballot, and several of them won. Following are the results of some of those races:
Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, edged out U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent, by an eight-point margin in one of the most expensive Congressional races in the country. During the contest, Ms. Warren, a Democrat who is the first woman elected to the Senate from Massachusetts, was challenged on her status as an academic at an elite institution and also dogged by allegations that she had used her Native American heritage to gain an advantage in landing jobs.
Angus King, the Independent candidate in Maine’s three-way U.S. Senate race, defeated the Democratic candidate, Cynthia A. Dill, and the Republican, Charles E. Summers. Mr. King garnered 53 percent of the vote, to Ms. Dill’s 13 percent and Mr. Summers’s 30 percent. Mr. King is a lecturer at Maine’s Bowdoin College, where he teaches a course on leaders and leadership. Ms. Dill is an adjunct faculty member at Southern Maine Community College, where she teaches an introductory course on American government.
A former U.S. senator, Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat, failed in his bid to return to the Senate, losing by a 16-point margin to the Republican Deb Fischer. After retiring from the Senate, in 2001, Mr. Kerrey was appointed president of the New School, where he had a rocky tenure marked by conflict with the New York college’s faculty and students. Those tensions were renewed this year after it was disclosed that Mr. Kerrey had received a lucrative departure package and was still earning as much as $600,000 a year to serve as a president emeritus, even as he was running for Senate. Mr. Kerrey’s stint as college president became an issue during the campaign, as Ms. Fischer, a cattle rancher, criticized his long absence from the state.
Rep. Timothy Bishop, a New York Democrat who had a career in higher-education administration before entering politics, in 2003, fended off a challenge from the Republican candidate, Randy Altschuler. Voters in Mr. Bishop’s Long Island Congressional district re-elected him by a four-point margin. Before he was elected to the House, Mr. Bishop was provost of Southampton College, where he worked for nearly 30 years. Mr. Bishop serves on the House education committee and its higher-education subcommittee, and has been a vocal proponent of federal student-aid programs.
Roscoe G. Bartlett, a longtime Republican congressman from Maryland, was unseated by his Democratic challenger, John K. Delaney, in a Congressional district that was redrawn following the 2010 census to be more favorable to a Democratic candidate. Well before his entrance into politics, in the 1980s, Mr. Bartlett earned a Ph.D. in physiology and has taught at the University of Maryland at College Park, the Loma Linda School of Medicine, in California, and the Howard University College of Medicine, in Washington, D.C.
Christopher T. Henrichsen, the Democratic challenger to the Republican incumbent, Cynthia M. Lummis, in Wyoming’s only Congressional district, lost the race in a landslide, 24 percent to 69 percent. Mr. Henrichsen is a political-science instructor at Wyoming’s Casper College and a doctoral student in the same field at Idaho State University.
Angela K. Zimmann, the Democratic challenger to the Republican incumbent, Robert E. Latta, in Ohio’s Fifth Congressional District, lost the race, garnering 39 percent of the vote to Mr. Latta’s 58 percent. Ms. Zimmann is a writing instructor at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio.
Charles Dumas, the Democratic challenger to the Republican incumbent, Glenn Thompson, in Pennsylvania’s Fifth Congressional District lost the race, 37 percent to 63 percent. Mr. Dumas is a professor in the School of Theater at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting professor at the University of the Free State, in South Africa.
Duane D. Milne, the Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania’s 167th state legislative district, won re-election, defeating the Democratic challenger, Rob Broderick, 59 percent to 41 percent. Mr. Milne is a tenured professor of political science at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Correction (11/8/2012, 4:32 p.m.): This post originally misstated the voting statistics in the contest between Duane D. Milne and Rob Broderick. Mr. Milne defeated Mr. Broderick, 59 percent to 41 percent, not 59 percent to 51 percent. The post has been updated to reflect this correction.
