Democrat Patrick Murphy has a message for his opponent, Rep. Allen West, who is refusing to concede his re-election battle in Florida: Give it up.
The candidate, who is leading the Tea Party incumbent, told Hardball’s Chris Matthews on Monday that there’s “No question about it. We won this race.”
The Sunshine State’s unofficial tally, according to NBC News, shows Murphy ahead by about 2,000 votes. NBC has not yet called the race, although state election officials say Murphy has accrued enough votes to avoid a recount.
The Democrat had declared victory as early as Wednesday. Still, West’s campaign is insisting there are discretions, mainly in St. Lucie County, which Murphy won. West says that some votes may have been counted twice.
Matthews asked Murphy what it was like to run against and deal with a lawmaker who has previously insisted up to 80 House Democrats are communist.
“I’m glad that we can put this campaign behind us,” said Murphy. “I spent way too much time talking about Allen West and his comments and his rhetoric because it was way too divisive for our country. Truthfully, I’m excited to get to work for the district and for the country.”
Murphy also insisted that he was able to get “quite a bit” of Republican votes due to West’s strict conservatism.
“There’s a lot of Republicans that are confused right now. I get calls all the time from Republicans that don’t know which way to go because they fear the party is going way too far right. So the party will have to make a decision pretty quickly. If they continue going this far right, they’ll lose a lot of people,” said Murphy.
President Obama, of course, was declared the winner of key battleground state of Florida on Saturday. Obama led Romney 50% to 49.1%, a difference of about 74,000 votes.