I have to say this was a hard one for me. The Lugar office has always been nice and helpful, and I always received a written letter about my questions. Donnelly is meh, but hopefully meh is exactly what Indiana is looking for. Added- Holy crap, he beat Lugar by almost 20 points.

Sen. Richard Lugar’s 36-year Senate career is now history.

The Associated Press called the race for Mourdock about 7:45 p.m.

Lugar was defeated in today’s Republican primary election by Treasurer Richard Mourdock, ending his bid for a seventh term in the U.S. Senate.

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Lugar is an Indiana icon who has influenced everything from the political makeup of Indianapolis to global nuclear proliferation. As mayor of Indianapolis, he led the effort to create Unigov, combining city and county government. And as the GOP leader in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he’s played a lead role in combatting the spread of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union.

But while voters may have appreciated those things, in the end he was seen as a figure from the past who didn’t have a place in the Republican Party’s future.

Voters cited his age, 80; his Virginia address where he’d lived since 1977; his votes for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees and his support for keeping earmarks in the hands of the legislative branch rather than surrender that power to the White House. And party insiders noted that Lugar had been a distant figure, not bothering to come to party events in Indiana until this year, when it was too late to kindle the relationships that could help him win.