Representative Dana Rohrabacher, whose quixotic foreign policy campaigns made him persona non grata in Pakistan and Afghanistan and who became a rare US defender of Vladimir Putin, has lost his seat after 30 years.
The 71-year-old Republican, whose exploits have included grabbing a gun to join Afghanistan's anti-Soviet mujahedin, was projected Saturday to have lost, four days after midterm elections in which Democrats seized the House of Representatives.
Harley Rouda, a Democratic real estate developer, led Rohrabacher by four percentage points in a district in southern California's Orange County, a longtime conservative bastion that gave rise to Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan but where greater ethnic diversity has contributed to a shift toward Democrats.
After working as a speechwriter to Reagan, Rohrabacher was elected to Congress in 1988 on an aggressively anti-communist platform.
Yet his stern views belied a quintessentially Californian quirkiness as he relished surfing, playing guitar and, well before the issue was mainstream, supported legal marijuana, saying he himself had done "everything but drink the bong water."
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