Rep Cliff Stearns trailing newcomer in Florida primary

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) -- chairman of the House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations -- was refusing to concede late August 14 to a veterinarian who has never held elected office. But by all appearances, Florida voters had delivered a stunning defeat to Rep Stearns who put the White House on the hot seat over Solyndra and helped trigger this year's Komen-Planned Parenthood blowup.

Political novice Ted Yoho, leading by 829 votes out of 63,690 counted with all precincts reporting, wasn't waiting to celebrate victory. It's possible that still-to-be-counted provisional ballots and overseas absentee ballots could eat into Yoho's lead, or even reverse the outcome. For now, though, Yoho's margin is 1.3 percent, outside the 0.5-percent margin that Florida law sets for an automatic recount. Yoho had 34.4 percent of the vote to Stearns's 33.1 percent in a four-candidate field. Still, the outcome was an unexpected rebuke for Stearns, an incumbent whose $2.1 million campaign war chest far outweighed Yoho's $129,500 as of late July — and who, as recently as March, appeared to be a rising Republican rock star. Rep Stearns was battling in a newly redrawn North Florida district under a voter-approved redistricting system that was aimed at reducing gerrymandering. He also suffered a number of self-inflicted injuries, including incidents in which he questioned whether Obama's birth certificate was “legitimate,” admitted he had wrongly accused the White House of withholding Solyndra-related emails, and incorrectly boasted that his probe of the failed solar company had led to “the first subpoena issued to the White House since the Watergate era.”