Physics Today: Millionaire physicist Bill Foster may be the only democrat candidate running for Congressional office that has had an entire section of his campaign web site devoted to the particle accelerators and superconducting magnets. More remarkably, he just won a closely fought election by 53% to 47% in what is a republican stronghold.

Foster defeated businessman and dairy magnate Jim Oberweis in a special election in Illinois to replace Republican representative Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, who announced his retirement on November 26, 2007. Foster's campaign was supported by Illinois Senator Barak Obama, an endorsement that helped boost democratic turnout for the special election.

“Back in the laboratory, this is what we’d say was a pretty successful experiment,” said Foster, in a victory speech at a banquet hall in Aurora. “You sent a clear message to everyone in Washington. You demanded change, and you are demanding it now.”

Foster, who founded a successful national theater lighting company and has a 22-year career at Fermilab as a high energy physicist, worked on the collider detector that discovered the top quark and is the co-inventor of Fermilab’s antiproton recycler ring. Fermilab is near the heart of his congressional district, and has had to lay off 10% of its staff due to the decimation of the high energy physics budget for 2008.

Foster won’t have much time to become established in Washington political circles as the seat is up for grabs in November. He is sworn in on Thursday, when official certification of the election results are sent to Congress.

Related links
Fermilab rescue too late (2/7/2008)
Fermilab to Begin Furloughs on Friday (1/26/2008)
Federal cuts may doom Fermilab's bid for ILC (1/24/2008)
Budget blow to US science (12/28/2007)
Fermilab to cut 200 jobs, staff forced to take unpaid days off (12/21/2007)