Luminaries from the world of sports and entertainment tried Tuesday to trade their stardom for political office - with only mixed success.
Part-time actor Fred Thompson, a Republican who recently played supporting roles in the movie hits "In the Line of Fire" and "The Hunt for Red October," won his race to represent Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.Thompson, who also is a Washington lobbyist and former counsel to the Watergate Committee, easily beat Rep. Jim Cooper, a six-term Democrat who authored a leading alternative to President Clinton's health-care reforms. Winning with more than 60 percent of the vote, Thompson will fill the Senate seat once held by Vice President Al Gore.
But the polls brought an early electoral fumble for Jack Mildren, a former all-American football star at the University of Oklahoma who lost his bid to be Oklahoma's governor.
With about 47 percent of the vote, Republican Frank Keating handily won the three-way race against Mildren, the current Democratic lieutenant governor, and independent Wes Watkins.
Another former gridiron great in Oklahoma, where football is sacred, won his political trophy.
In Norman, former Sooner football quarterback J.C. Watts won with about 51 percent of the vote - enough to beat Democrat David Perryman. The win makes Watts the second black Republican in the U.S. House.
Watts, twice voted most valuable player in the Orange Bowl when he quarterbacked University of Oklahoma victories in 1980 and 1981, is chairman of the state corporation commission, which regulates Oklahoma's oil and gas industry.
Also in Oklahoma, Steve Largent, a seven-time Pro Bowl wide receiver with the Seattle Seahawks, won the open congressional seat in the Tulsa area. A Republican businessman after he left pro football in 1989, Largent surpassed Democrat Stuart Price by about a 2 to 1 margin.
In the South, the election proved to be curtains for a congressional comeback for Ben Jones, who played "Cooter" in the old TV series "Dukes of Hazzard."
A two-term Democratic representative from Georgia until he lost in 1992 after his suburban Atlanta seat was redistricted, Jones was trounced by Rep. Newt Gingrich, who is the front-runner to be House speaker now that the Republicans have taken over control of the House.
Gingrich won with more than 60 percent of the vote.
In Florida, drag-racing legend Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, a blunt-talking conservative Republican, spun out in his challenge to Rep. Karen Thurman, a freshman Democrat from northern Florida. Thurman won with 57 percent of the vote.
Garlits, whose name was synonymous with hot-rods and souped up cars for four decades, made waves when he said a small percentage of blacks are responsible for most of the nation's crime.
In California, two TV stars - Sonny Bono and Sheila Kuehl, who played "Zelda" on the "Dobie Gillis" TV show - waged campaigns.
Bono, who became famous decades ago singing with his ex-wife Cher, already has been mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., and was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1992. But this year he won and will represent the desert resort communities of the Coachella Valley in Congress.
Bono said his victory was part of a backlash against politics as usual.
"You guys in Washington have got to be responsible. If you can't do the job, we're going to do it for you," he said.
Working his way up through nightclubs, hitting it big with a TV show, Bono had been famous mostly for a droopy moustache, bell bottoms and a song called "I Got You, Babe" - straight man to a drop-dead chick both taller and more talented.
Kuehl, a Harvard Law School graduate and feminist activist, is running as a Democrat for a state assembly seat from the Los Angeles area. She would be the first openly gay person to serve in the California Legislature.
Former major league baseball pitcher Jim Bunning won re-election to his U.S. House seat in Kentucky.