BATON ROUGE - Republican Mike Johnson will head to Washington in January to represent Louisiana's 4th Congressional District.

The state lawmaker from Benton won Saturday's runoff election for the open seat, defeating Democrat Marshall Jones, a lawyer from Shreveport.

Johnson focused on his conservative record, both his decades as a constitutional attorney and his nearly two years in the Louisiana Legislature pushing social and fiscal conservative issues.

Jones ran as an anti-abortion, pro-gun Democrat who could work across party lines, trying to win crossover support in a district that has favored Republicans. He lost a similar bid for Congress in 1988.

The northwest Louisiana-based seat was open because Republican incumbent John Fleming ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat. The 4th District is largely rural, stretching from the Arkansas line into southwest Louisiana, including the Shreveport area.