Here are all last night's winners who are also indicted

Here are all last night&#039;s winners who are also indicted

(Image credit: iStock)

last updated 8 January 2015

If you're facing possible criminal charges but also want to be an elected official, don't worry! There's a good chance voters will support you anyway. Here are winners of the 2014 elections who could be going to jail soon:

* Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) was re-elected by his Staten Island constituents despite a 20-count federal indictment for tax fraud and an incident of threatening to throw a reporter off a balcony.

* Democratic New York Assemblyman William Scarborough won his seat in Queens again after running unopposed — despite being accused of stealing $40,000 from the state government by lying about travel expenses.

* Alabama State House Speaker Mike Hubbard (R) got 60 percent of the vote despite felony ethics charges for using his position to line his own pockets.

* Democratic State Sen. John Sampson of Brooklyn took home a whopping 86 percent of the vote even though he's going to trial in February — and facing a 100-year prison term — for multiple charges relating to embezzlement and obstruction of justice.

* Also in New York, GOP State Sen. Thomas Libous won his election and will go to trial next year over accusations that he lied to the FBI.

* A Kentucky sheriff named Jamie Kinman was indicted on Monday, the day before his election, for allegedly tampering with evidence. His election results are not online as of this writing.

All in all, 2014 proved yet again that incumbency — not anything silly like embezzlement, theft, and fraud — is the single most predictive factor in American election outcomes.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.