Jim DeMint won a solid U.S. Senate victory Tuesday, pulling away from Inez Tenenbaum after sweating some tight early returns.

Republican DeMint and Democrat Tenenbaum waited into the evening for results in a contest that was one of the hardest-fought since 1992.

Tenenbaum conceded defeat shortly before 11 p.m.

At the Adam’s Mark hotel in Columbia, DeMint thanked his supporters and crowed, “That mission was accomplished. I’m your senator!”

A few blocks away at the new Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, Tenenbaum admitted this was not the ending she had envisioned, but she was thankful for the effort.

“Together, we ran a top-notch campaign that made this race neck and neck,” she said. “Together, we raised issues that matter most to South Carolina families.”

Back at the Adam’s Mark, DeMint took one last shot at Tenenbaum and the state education superintendent’s attempt to shackle DeMint to his proposal to implement a 23 percent national sales tax.

“The irony is, if you add 23 percent to her total, you get my total tonight,” DeMint said.

The three-term Upstate congressman also said his statements that gays and unwed mothers should not be public school teachers was a result of his having “incurred a little foot-in-mouth disease.”

“We decided to surround me with staff that put their feet in their mouths more than I did,” DeMint said. That way, he said, “they wouldn’t notice me anymore, and it worked like a charm.”

DeMint’s remarks capped a day that began with what looked to be an extremely close race. Early exit polls showed the race very nearly tied, but the actual results were not nearly so tight.

Still, for much of the evening, the mood at both Republican and Democratic election night parties was cautiously optimistic.

DeMint supporter Dave Hegler of Camden scanned the room at the Adam’s Mark and summed up the situation for both campaigns.

“A lot of people are on pins and needles,” the 34-year-old forester said. “But there’s a quiet confidence.”

Tenenbaum was watching returns with family and top staff members at a bed and breakfast in Columbia. The rest of the Democrats were partying at the convention center.

Tenenbaum spokesman Adam Kovacevich said the mood at the campaign gathering was “very positive and festive.”

As the night wore on and actual results were reported, it was clear why exit polls showed the race so tight. Tenenbaum was winning in Charleston, a county that has been leaning Republican in the past several elections. DeMint, meanwhile, had opened big leads across the Upstate and other parts of the Lowcountry.

“There’s a wait-and-see attitude for much of the night on both sides,” Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, said as he shook hands at the GOP party and pulled his 6-year-old son, Blake, around the floor.

The situation mirrored the national mood, he said.

“We have an electorate out there that feels very strong, in many cases in the opposite direction.”

DeMint will be sworn in Jan. 3, which will be the first day in 50 years that neither Strom Thurmond nor Fritz Hollings will be in the Senate.

Together with Lindsey Graham, who replaced Thurmond in 2002, DeMint will launch a new era in state politics.

DeMint and Graham will be the first two Republicans to hold both of South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seats since Reconstruction.

The race to reach this point was not easy. DeMint and Tenenbaum tore into each other throughout one of the nastiest campaigns in recent memory. Different, too, was that with the race generally close and control of the Senate perhaps on the line, outside groups bombarded the state with money and advertising.

Tenenbaum benefited from an estimated $6 million in outside help, including anti-DeMint ads from the left-leaning Citizens for a Strong Senate and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Emily’s List, a group that backs female candidates who support abortion rights, also helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Tenenbaum.

DeMint was helped by Americans for Job Security, which ran a punishing anti-Tenenbaum ad early in the campaign, as well as the conservative Club for Growth and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which also ran anti-Tenenbaum ads.

The real race became not so much to get out the base of each side, but to attract the nearly 30 percent of the state’s electorate that claims to be independent. Tenenbaum tried to paint herself as a Democrat who is independent of national party influences. DeMint said he was the only one who would support President Bush’s war on terrorism.