Betty McCollum coasts to sixth House term [UPDATED]

Ready, steady Betty -- no surprises in District 4.

Since this outcome was so unsurprising we figured we'd ask -- did anything about this time around surprise McCollum?

"There was a lack of respect and lack of decency in the way that some of the Tea Party representatives attended rallies and conducted themselves," she says.

McCollum carried 60.84 percent of the vote in the ultra-Democratic district. Collett, a law professor at St. Thomas University, took only 32.98 percent.

"I ran on my record. My record is working with President Obama," McCollum says. "There is still a lot of work to do."

And arguably a lot harder work, after what happened nationally in this election.

The race was, to many, a foregone conclusion, as McCollum has been trouncing Republican challengers since she took office in 2001.

Challenger Collett was a pro-life, anti-gay marriage conservative who ran on repealing the health care reform bill and reducing the size of government.

Surprise-lessness aside, we have some fond memories of this time around.

There was that career-ending revelation that once, eight years ago, McCollum missed the words "under God" while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. How she recovered from that one we'll never know.

There was the entrance of cuckoo-crazypants Jack Shephard, the fugitive Minnesotan living in Italy who ran on a pro-marijuana agenda during the primary. His bid for the 4th district morphed into the "Mad As Hell" write-in campaign when he -- shocker -- did not clinch the GOP nomination.

But as it turns out, St. Paulites are less mad as hell as they are mad about McCollum.