In the end, it wasn't even close.

With virtually all of the votes counted, DeMint had a convincing 10-point lead, a margin that gives him the right to roll Fritz Hollings's Senate seat to the other side of the political aisle.

For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans will hold both of the state's Senate seats.

"It is amazing what a regular, low-voltage guy can do with the help of some friends and family," DeMint told his supporters at a victory party in Columbia. "To say I'm pleasantly surprised would be an understatement."

DeMint benefited from some high-powered help, not only President Bush at the top of the ticket, but also some high-powered endorsements from Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. Lindsey Graham.

"Folks have decided to send a tax-cutter to Washington," Sanford told the DeMint crowd at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Columbia.

DeMint, the state's 4th District U.S. representative, carried the Upstate by a 2-to-1 margin in some counties, while Tenenbaum won several Midlands counties. While DeMint took Berkeley and Dorchester counties, Tenenbaum took narrow leads in Colleton and Charleston counties.

It has been a quick rise for DeMint, a marketing professional who landed on the political scene in 1998 when he won the seat in Congress that he helped Bob Inglis win in 1992. DeMint adopted as his own the basic tenets of the Republican Party, particularly changing the federal tax code and privatizing Social Security.

DeMint found himself in mostly in lock-step with the Bush administration, voting to give fast-track trade authority to the president. By giving the president unilateral power to negotiate trade agreements, DeMint critics argued he had cost South Carolina jobs. DeMint said the move would help diversify the state's economy.

In political circles, he was considered the early odds-on favorite -- and the White House pick -- to take the seat Hollings is vacating. His road to the Senate got rocky when former Gov. David Beasley entered the race, taking first place in the Republican primary.

Through a series of runoff attack ads, DeMint prevailed. It was a strategy he would, surprisingly, have to repeat.

As the Republican nominee in a conservative state, DeMint was expected to win big, strengthening his party's hold on the Senate. But through a series of miscues, controversial statements about gays and unwed mothers being unfit to teach in public schools, along with Tenenbaum's focus on his support of a national sales tax, DeMint found himself in the middle of an October brawl and a race that was, through much of the month, a statistical dead heat.

"When I incurred a little foot-in-mouth disease, we surrounded me with staff that had a worse case," DeMint said, joking about an e-mail one staffer accidentally sent to a gay group.

Through much of the race, Tenenbaum controlled the debate, forcing DeMint to defend his national sales tax idea, which would replace all payroll and income taxes with a 23 percent national sales tax. While DeMint said it was a fair tax that would allow the federal government to eliminate the IRS, Democrats produced studies that the tax would cost the average South Carolinian an additional $3,000 in taxes, while the wealthiest 5 percent would see a tax cut of $29,000. DeMint's camp said the numbers, from a partisan think tank, were wrong but offered no differing calculations.

When polls showed the race tightening, both sides saw a chance, the Democrats an opportunity to not lose ground in the South, the Republicans a chance to gain, and bombarded the state with attack ads.

News of DeMint's victory was slow to work its way through the crowd at the new Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, where the Tenenbaum faithful continued to watch TV monitors, hoping for a positive update.

Shortly after 10:30, the Democrat conceded, telling her supporters that they had done better than the pundits expected them to, and said they had together worked hard for the people and children of the state.

"I hate to lose, losing hurts. But my parents taught me not to wallow in it," she said. "The best thing is when I get up in the morning, I don't have to wear a red dress."

Hollings made an appearance at the gathering, and the crowd thanked him for a lifetime of political service. Hollings, in his characteristic manner, said they had it backward -- he should be thanking them.

"It's a bit like the fireplug wetting the dog," Hollings said.

DeMint, 53, will take a seat that Republicans have eyed for a long time, joining Graham to present a new, and decidedly less senior, face for the state of South Carolina. DeMint replaces Hollings, first elected to the Senate in 1966, only two years after Graham took over Strom Thurmond's seat, which he had held for 48 years.

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