BLOOMFIELD -- State Rep. Marilyn Taylor Williams, D-Dudley, fended off a strong challenge by first-time Republican candidate Larry Sandage in Tuesday's general election.
Williams again will represent the state's 159th District, a seat she has held since winning a special election in 1991.
Tuesday's vote was 5,181-4,017 in Williams' favor. She defeated Sandage by fewer than 500 votes in her home county of Stoddard but more than doubled his totals in Scott County.
Sandage owns a locksmith business in Dexter. His only previous political experience was an unsuccessful run for the Dexter School Board.
He had labeled Williams too liberal for her district. Just before the election, he also charged that Williams was "stonewalling" over an incident the Stoddard County Sheriff's Department investigated at her farm in September.
Williams could not be reached for comment.
Sandage said his relatively close race demonstrates dissatisfaction with Williams in the county. "Of course I'm disappointed," he said. "But it was very close for my first time."
He's ready to run again, he said. "I'm excited about the next race."
In the last days of the campaign, Sandage and Williams traded charges over the incident at her farm. He said she should "come clean" and she accused him of taking political advantage of two families' tragedies.
Two Dexter youths were killed in a car crash involving alcohol after leaving a gathering that night at the Williams farm.
An investigation by the Stoddard County Sheriff's Department determined that the teen-agers had not consumed alcohol at the Williams farm. But rumors persisted at least in part because a friend of Williams' son, Roy, was arrested that night on the farm for driving in a drugged condition.
The state representative and her husband, Rick, reportedly were not at the farm at the time.
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