Overland Park ? U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., dodged another bullet.

Moore, a two-term incumbent, won re-election to the 3rd District seat Tuesday, narrowly defeating GOP challenger Adam Taff.

With 583 of the District’s 600 precincts reporting, Moore was declared the winner shortly after 10 p.m. with 50 percent of the vote. Taff, a moderate Republican, had 47 percent.

Libertarian candidate Douglas Martin and Reform Party candidate Dawn Bly split the remaining 3 percent.

“I believe that what the voters have said is experience and results do matter and do count,” Moore said. “This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about good ideas and what’s right for our country.”

After addressing supporters at an Overland Park conference center, Moore led the exuberant crowd in singing “This Land is Your Land.”

Taff, a former Navy pilot, said he’d likely run against Moore again in 2004.

“The fire is still there,” he told more than 500 loyal supporters at a gathering in a ballroom at the Marriott Hotel in Overland Park.

Moore’s victory means all four Kansas congressmen won re-election Tuesday. Moore’s race was the only one that was close. He remains the only Democrat in the Kansas congressional delegation.

‘Accomplished a lot’

Because the 3rd District is heavily Republican  with 191,646 registered Republicans and 122,323 registered Democrats  Moore’s congressional tenure is considered vulnerable.

The district includes the northeastern one-third of Douglas County and all of Johnson and Wyandotte counties.

Meeting with reporters before his concession speech, Taff said he wished he’d had two more months to raise money to run more television commercials.

Also, Taff said his campaign was hampered by many Democrats in Johnson County registering Republican so they could vote in the county’s GOP-dominated primaries. In the general election, he said, many of those voters side with Democrats.

“The fact that Dennis Moore won doesn’t mean Adam Taff didn’t run a good, strong, competent campaign. He ran an excellent campaign, he generated a lot of enthusiasm, he accomplished a lot,” said Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, a Taff supporter.

It was Taff’s first political campaign.

Besides its 313,969 Republicans and Democrats, the district on Tuesday included 131,810 voters registered “unaffiliated,” 2,902 Libertarians, and 505 Reform Party.

Primary battles

In the August GOP primary, Taff, a moderate, defeated conservative Dr. Jeff Colyer, a plastic surgeon who had been endorsed by Sen. Sam Brownback. In that race, Taff got 40,609 votes to Colyer’s 37,771.

Moore was unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Though Taff won the GOP primary, he alienated many in the party’s conservative wing when, in the latter weeks of the campaign, he and Colyer accused each other of lying about the other’s record. The two almost came to blows July 19 after a taped debate.

Initially, the powerful National Republican Congressional Committee backed Colyer’s candidacy.

Last week, citing Taff’s successes in the primary and his ability to attract young voters, the national committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said a Taff victory was “one of our top priorities in the House.”

The Moore camp chuckled at Davis’ endorsement, noting that in an earlier interview with The New York Times he’d said Taff was “an airline pilot who’s a nice kid, but he’s got no clue.”

Kansans for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, endorsed Reform Party candidate Dawn Bly in the general election.

In the 2000 general election, Moore defeated conservative Republican Phill Kline, 154,505 to 144,672. On Tuesday, Kline was in a tight race with Democrat Chris Biggs for the attorney general’s office.

Two years earlier, Moore unseated then-U.S. Rep. Vince Snowbarger, R-Kan., a one-term incumbent. In that race, Moore had 103,376 votes to Snowbarger’s 93,938.

Like Kline, Snowbarger was a conservative.

Moore is a member of the House Committees on the Budget, Banking and Financial Services, and Science. He lives in Lenexa with his wife, Stephene, a registered nurse, and their family.