With reelection in hand, Sen. Jack Reed takes the stage at the Providence Biltmore, where Democrats were gathering last night to hear election returns.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed yesterday easily defeated two-time Republican challenger Robert Tingle to win a third term in the U.S. Senate.

After a campaign in which the senator declined to debate or appear with his opponent in a televised forum, Reed trounced Tingle, a pit boss at Foxwoods Resort & Casino, taking 73.4 percent of the vote to Tingle’s 26.6 percent (with 97 percent of the precincts reporting).

In the six years since his last matchup with Tingle, Reed, 58, became a husband and father for the first time. His national profile also rose dramatically. This year alone, he traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with presidential candidate Barack Obama, served as a key player in fashioning the $700-billion economic rescue package, and found himself in the middle of the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac storms as a senior member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

No challenger could compete with the kinds of announcements that Reed’s position enabled him to make. In late September, for example, he announced that $19.6 million was headed to Rhode Island to buy, fix up and sell foreclosed properties as a result of a $3.92-billion federal program he helped craft.

His TV ads told Rhode Islanders that he is “Our Fighter in the Senate.” And despite persistent speculation, he insisted he has no plans to accept a Cabinet position in an Obama administration.

But his elevated profile also brought less flattering attention. He was mentioned, for example, in a recent New York Times story about the events that led to the collapse of mortgage giant Fannie Mae, including the demands that Democratic lawmakers were placing on the company to steer more loans to low-income borrowers.

“When homes are doubling in price every six years and incomes are increasing by a mere one percent per year, Fannie’s mission is of paramount importance,” Reed “lectured” the company’s top executive, according to The Times account of that 2006 congressional hearing. “In fact, Fannie and Freddie can do more, a lot more.”

Attention also turned to the money that Reed, a key supporting player in crafting the $700 million Wall Street rescue plan, raised for his reelection from people in banking, securities, real estate and insurance — the industries with the biggest direct stake in the historic federal intervention. The financial sector accounted for more than $1 million of the $4.45 million he amassed.

Responding to criticism, Reed said his “guiding principle” as a legislator is “what is best for the people of Rhode Island and the people of the United States.” Campaign donations are “not central to how I make decisions.”

Tingle argued that Reed has become too much of an entrenched insider. He pledged to make abortion and immigration his premiere issues. He said Reed is out of touch with voters on both. But he acknowledged that he was “like Rocky [Balboa] against Apollo Creed.”

A third candidate, Christopher Young, mounted a write-in campaign after being soundly beaten by Reed in the September Democratic primary.

kgregg@projo.com