Aiken, who came in second in the popular reality show, was defeated in a Raleigh-area district
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
Democratic U.S. House candidate Clay Aiken
RALEIGH (CFP) — American Idol finalist Clay Aiken has been defeated in his first bid for public office, a U.S. House race in his native North Carolina.
Aiken, 35, running as a Democrat in the state’s 2nd District, located in and around Raleigh, was defeated by incumbent two-term GOP U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent in the November 4 vote.
“The result did not go the way we wanted it tonight, but we’ve walked down this path once or twice before,” Aiken told election night supports at a restaurant in Sanford, alluding to his controversial second-place finish on Idol.
The Esquire Network announced November 5 that Aiken’s campaign would be the subject of a TV reality series set to air in 2015. In a statement, the network said it had been filming Aiken’s campaign since February, and the series would “capture the internal workings of an American campaign — the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Aiken was seeking to become the first openly gay member of Congress from the South.
His campaign took a bizarre turn in May when the man he narrowly defeated in the Democratic primary, Keith Crisco, died from a fall less than a week after the vote.
Chicken Fried Politics 
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