(A-P) Republican Charles Grassley has won a seventh U.S. Senate term, extending a political winning streak that stretches to the 1950s.  Grassley on Tuesday defeated Democrat Patty Judge, a former lieutenant governor who had been seen by national party officials as the party’s best hope to dislodge Grassley. The Republican has never lost an election, with a string of victories that started with winning a legislative seat in 1958 and continued with his election to the U.S. House in 1974 and Senate in 1980.

Judge focused much of her campaign on the refusal by Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, to hold hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and his support for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Grassley argued that he was a conservative but independent voice in Washington.