Justice David Wiggins will live to bang his gavel another day as Iowa voters decided to keep him around following a massive campaign led by conservatives to oust him from the bench.

Wiggins was one of the seven judges on Iowa’s Supreme Court to unanimously rule Iowa’s ban on gay marriage as a violation of the state constitution’s equal-protection clause in 2009.

Never ones to stand on their sour grapes, the National Organization for Marriage and other conservative groups campaigned to remove these so-called activist judges and voters outed three of them in 2010.

What a difference two years make. The Washington Times reports that over 54 percent of voters decided Judge Wiggins should keep his robe on, about 10 percent more than his less fortunate colleagues.

“I want to thank the people of Iowa who preserved the fairness and impartiality of Iowa’s courts and agree that equal means equal,” Justice Wiggins said Wednesday.

Iowans, in a further show of equanimity, re-elected Democratic Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal, who has blocked debate of the gay marriage amendment for three years, citing his refusal to enshrine discrimination in the Iowa Constitution.

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