JUST IN: Fmr. Rep. Todd Akin has died aged 74, his son says.
Missouri Republican Senate candidate, Rep. Todd Akin, speaks while surrounded by supporters at a news conference on Sept. 25, 2012, in St. Louis.Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, a conservative Missouri Republican whose comment that women’s bodies have a way of avoiding pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape”and became a cautionary tale for other GOP candidates, died late Sunday. He was 74.
Akin represented a Republican-leaning eastern Missouri district that included St. Louis-area suburbs for 12 years, giving up a safe seat to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012. He emerged from a crowded GOP primary to challenge then incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, only to seriously hurt Republicans’ chances of recapturing a Senate majority less than two weeks later.whether he supported allowing abortions for women who have been raped.
Akin faced pressure from the national GOP to withdraw and allow the state party to pick a replacement. He refused and ended up losing the race by nearly 16 percentage points, receiving 39 percent of the vote. Yet other Republican officials and officeholders across the U.S. occasionally echoed his remarks — signaling how conservative some of the party’s base had become on the issue.
Akin was born July 5, 1947, in New York City, but grew up in the St. Louis area. He received a bachelor’s degree in engineering and management from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts in 1970, served in the U.S. Army and worked for IBM. He worked in corporate management at the St. Louis-based Laclede Steel Co.
Many Democrats thought McCaskill’s best shot at winning reelection would be with Akin as the GOP nominee. Her campaign aired television ads suggesting Akin was too conservative, Brunner was not a reliable conservative and Steelman represented “more politics as usual.”
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