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Wednesday, Nov 3, 2010 3:02 PM UTC

How many of the “Terrifying 10″ candidates won?

Some extremely colorful Republican candidates were swept into Congress on the wave of economic discontent

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Topics: 2010 Elections, War Room,

How many of the Allen West

As Jamelle Bouie observed the other day, “in bad economic times, there is no such thing as an ‘unelectable’ candidate.”

It’s time to take stock of the incoming Congress, and there’s no better place to start than Salon’s list of the 10 most terrifying (and colorful) would-be congressmen, put together before the election last week. Five of the 10 won last night, four lost, and one is stuck in a race that has not been called.

The winners are:

  • Renee Ellmers in North Carolina, who ran perhaps the single most anti-Muslim attack ad of the entire campaign season (and then refused to apologize for it).
  • Ben Quayle in Arizona, the son of the former vice-president who dissembled about his role as a commenter on the misogynistic website DirtyScottsdale.com.
  • Scott DesJarlais in Tennessee, who allegedly dry-fired a gun outside the door of a room his wife was hiding in during a fight.
  • Allen West in Florida, an Iraq war veteran who was also a contributing writer to the ribald biker magazine Wheels on the Road.
  • Austin Scott in Georgia, who says his top priority will be instituting mandatory drug tests for people on unemployment.

Jesse Kelly, the Arizona candidate who embraced (and was embraced by) a controversial anti-immigration group, is currently behind Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, but the race has not been called.

Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott.

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