Democrat Jane Harman once again polished off a challenge by GOP rival Brian Gibson, a retired Boeing engineer, to win an eighth term in Congress, representing the 36th District spanning the beach cities and El Segundo, and stretching from Venice to the Port of Los Angeles.
I’m sleepless in Los Angeles, Harman said the morning after the election.

Harman was looking ahead to the organization of the new Congress, and an expected vote on a second economic stimulus package by members of the outgoing Congress.
Harman, a member of the House Energy and Congress Committee, said she will push to encourage development of clean vehicle engines. Locally, she said she will push to protect LAX’s neighbors from any negative effects of modernization, and continue to push for the expansion of coastal bicycle lanes north of the beach cities.

Harman, 63, trounced Gibson, 69 percent to 31 percent, after having beaten him by a roughly 2-to-1 margin in 2006.
During the 2006 campaign Gibson told Easy Reader that his goal was to unseat Harman in 2008, but that was not to be.

During the campaign just ended, Gibson, a 55-year-old El Segundo resident, said his volunteers were busy knocking on doors to try to unseat the incumbent.
Harman made numerous campaign appearances in the district, worked the telephones with calls to constituents, and pressed her case in mailers including a brochure with a photo of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama holding one of her grandchildren.

The Harman campaign had raised more than $566,000 to Gibson’s $7,500, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Gibson had taken Harman to task on the $700 billion federal financial bailout, on abortion, and on her vote that gave the president authority to invade Iraq.

Harman said she supported the bailout package only after requirements were added for some returns on the taxpayers’ investment, and for renegotiation of the terms of home mortgages that will be held by the federal government.

Harman has championed abortion rights, and has helped lead a bipartisan investigation into pre-war intelligence, the search for weapons of mass destruction, and the continued U.S. presence in Iraq. ER