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Americans woke with joy, cautious optimism and frank worry on Wednesday after the historic win by Democrat Barack Obama, who went from long shot to president-elect on the promise of change. 

Just hours after Obama’s victory speech to thousands of cheering supporters in Chicago, ordinary Americans headed to work clutching coffees and carrying newspapers that proclaimed Obama’s place in history as the first black U.S. president. 

Obama rode a wave of voter discontent to triumph over Republican John McCain, while his fellow Democrats won increased majorities in Congress, as Americans emphatically rejected Republican President George W. Bush’s eight years in office.

Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and white mother from Kansas, warned supporters Tuesday night that he faces huge challenges from a deep economic crisis and two wars, and cautioned he will not be able to please everybody.

Obama’s coattails proved to be not so long in Central Texas as area voters re-elected U.S. Rep. John Carter to his fourth term in Congress.

Carter, a Republican from Round Rock, defeated Democratic candidate Brian P. Ruiz of Hutto and Libertarian Barry N. Cooper by wide margins.

“I am grateful my neighbors have elected me to serve them for another two years,” Carter said Tuesday night at the Bell County Expo Center in Belton.

With all counties reporting except for Falls County, Carter led with 155,201 votes, compared to 95,882 for Ruiz and 7,704 votes for Cooper.

Carter dominated the race in Bell County by garnering 57 percent of the vote. Ruiz, an Austin native and former real estate agent, finished second with 40.5 percent.

Carter will represent District 31, which is made up of Bell, Coryell, Milam, Falls, Erath, Hamilton, southern Robertson and Williamson counties. Recently, Carter was part of the minority in Congress who voted against the controversial financial bailout program.

“I think I made the right vote on the bailout. I voted against it. I believe my neighbors would have voted against it,” he said.

Carter said his most recent accomplishment as U.S. representative came when the Texas Department of Transportation announced that funding has been allocated to complete a construction project

to expand State Highway 195 to four lanes.

“It is very important to Bell County and to our soldiers to have a 195 that is safe,” he said.

Carter said he hopes to be selected to the transportation committee during his fourth term because he believes transportation is a high priority to his constituents.

During his first three terms in office, Carter made military funding and support a significant priority. The counties surrounding Fort Hood are included in his district.

Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a heavy favorite and by far the bigger spender in his race, defeated Democratic long-shot candidate Rick Noriega to secure a second term Tuesday night.

Cornyn had 54 percent of the vote to Noriega’s 44 percent with nearly half of precincts reporting. Libertarian Yvonne Schick was a distant third.

With his victory, Cornyn heads back to a Senate ruled by the opposing party. Democrats expanded their control of the Senate by capturing GOP-held seats in North Carolina, New Hampshire and elsewhere.

All year Noriega, a Houston state legislator and Army National Guard officer who served in Afghanistan, blasted Cornyn’s record, accusing him of saying one thing in Texas and doing another in Congress. Noriega looked to pick up support from voters who were fed up with the nation’s financial mess and seeking change.

Cornyn, who often sided with President Bush’s administration, attempted to cast himself as a commonsense Texan and an outsider to Washington who wasn’t satisfied with the direction of the federal government. The candidates clashed perhaps most fiercely over children’s health insurance and the recent $700 billion bailout for financial institutions that Cornyn voted for and Noriega opposed.

Noriega said the bailout didn’t contain enough accountability for Wall Street; Cornyn said an elected leader has to make difficult decisions and take action and said the package included provisions to help regular Texans.

Noriega got big-name help in Texas during the final weeks of the race from Bill and Hillary Clinton, who attended campaign rallies with him. But Cornyn always had the upper hand when it came to money and consistently polled ahead of Noriega.

That’s the feeling that overwhelmed Republican Ralph Sheffield, who took home 54 percent of the vote in Bell County’s House District 55 race with Democrat Sam Murphey after Tuesday’s vote.

When the early votes first popped onto the display screen at the Bell County Expo Center, one side was silent, the other not.

A supporter of Sheffield yelped when the number came back in his candidate’s favor, hugging Sheffield as he stood alongside his wife, Debbie. It’s been a long, tough road for the couple, and for the Republican party this year, which was divided during the primary.

“I feel great; I feel like all the hard work paid off,” Sheffield said Tuesday night from his restaurant, Las Casas, in Temple. “The early votes came in and I knew that it would be tough for Mr. Murphey to come back.”

Sheffield was the odds-on favorite to win the seat, which has been held by a Republican, Dianne White Delisi, for nearly 20 years. But after his heated battle with Martha Tyroch in the Republican primary in the spring, many throughout the district expressed concerns whether he could fend off the strong rise from Murphey, who had a financial backing like no other Democratic candidate had ever seen in Bell County. Added to that was the rise in Democratic support seen not only on the national level, but in the statehouse as well.

State Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, ran away with the votes for District 54 en route to winning his second term Tuesday. Aycock expressed relief Tuesday night concerning his overwhelming victory over Libertarian candidate Nicolaas Kramer. Aycock said his victory signalled a conclusion to a race that was much less contested than his first go-round in 2006. In that election, Aycock said he battled four Republican candidates, two Democrats and fought in what Aycock described as a “heated” Republican runoff on his way to victory.

Aycock received more than 75 percentage of votes in 51 precincts in Bell, Burnet and Lampasas counties. He said he hopes the overwhelming number of voters who backed him means he represented his constituents well.

With media outlets projecting the highest voter turnout in the past 100 years, Tuesday’s election saw a flood of local residents flock to polling precincts. St. Paul Chong Hasang Catholic Church, the polling site for Precinct 209 in Harker Heights, had a line out the door before voting began at 7 a.m. Voters waited from 30 to 40 minutes to cast their ballots.

Numerous residents opted to wait until the evening before trudging to their local polling places, in hopes of avoiding long lines during business hours.