The College Fix

Blair knocked out the Republican incumbent – nearly four times her age – in the primary and steamrolled her Democratic general-election opponent by 2 to 1.

She wants to reduce “certain” business taxes and she’s pro-life and pro-gun, the Journal said, and she’ll “defer her spring semester [at West Virginia University] to attend the part-time legislature’s 60-day session and make up classes in the summer and fall.”

It was a mixed bag for other young Republicans running for national office around the country.

Mia Love, who turns 40 next year, became the first black female Republican elected to Congress, the Huffington Post said, winning an open House seat in Utah currently occupied by the soon-to-retire Democrat who beat her in 2012, Jim Matheson.

Paul Dietzel, who is 28, has two master’s degrees from Pepperdine and founded his own fundraising software company, came up third for a House seat in Louisiana behind the top Democrat and Republican running in the open primary. That means he won’t go to the runoff election.

Dietzel was the target of a late anonymous smear campaign that implied he’s gay, the Times-Picayune reported – a web page that “questioned the candidate’s family values based on the fact that he was 28, had never been married, never had children and didn’t have a girlfriend.”

Dietzel’s conservative bona fides were also questioned by the top Republican vote-getter Tuesday.

Garret Graves, who finished second in the open primary, sent out a mailer saying that Dietzel “worked for a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group and for the state Democratic party,” though Graves said he had nothing to do with the “gay innuendo” web page, the paper said.

In one of the more severe trouncings Tuesday, Armond James, a 33-year-old black Republican running for a House seat in Philadelphia, lost to the Democratic incumbent, Chaka Fattah, who will now serve an 11th term, the Philadelphia Inquirer said.

It wasn’t pretty – James barely cracked 12 percent despite a campaign funds scandal involving Fattah’s former political adviser that has threatened to bring down Fattah himself.

This was also despite a glowing editorial endorsement from the Inquirer – which had endorsed Fattah in his prior races – that said the schoolteacher James “has made a point of spending time in some of the district’s rougher neighborhoods, advocates more support for vocational alternatives to college as well as corporate tax reform to improve employment.”

Greg Piper is an assistant editor at The College Fix. (@GregPiper)