Democrats portrayed Reichert as an ultra-conservative empty suit who mismanaged the state's largest county sheriff's office.

CNN: Reichert defeats Ross in open seat battle

Marcial Maciel, a Mexican priest who founded the Legionaries of Christ, an ultra-conservative Catholic movement, was a serial abuser.

ECONOMIST: Mexico's culture wars

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers are battling U.S. troops, takes his spiritual direction from an ultra-conservative, Iran-based, Iraqi-exile cleric.

CNN: Report: Iran invites Iraq's Allawi

Javier was an ultra-conservative, pro-Franco follower of the Opus Dei, and he never ceased to scandalize me with his political opinions, which I strained to understand in my developing Spanish.

WSJ: Escabeche: A Seafood Dish for the Fish-Phobe

Abu Mohammad, a fighter for Ahrar al-Sham, a prominent rebel brigade in northern Syria with an ultra-conservative ideology, said Qatar, as well as Turkey, "is interested in ruling Syria" once the regime is toppled.

NPR: Qatar Faces Backlash Among Rebel Groups In Syria

The trap he fell into in 1994 (albeit of his own making) was in enabling his Democratic opponents to portray him as an ultra-conservative, in part because he chose as a running-mate a man who had been a champion of the right-wing Christian Coalition.

ECONOMIST: Florida politics

In an ultra-conservative state where half the population goes to church every week and there are twice as many guns as people, Austin is an outcrop of pink hair amid the rednecks - an easy-living university town where intellectual slackers, pregnant punks and IT millionaires co-exist in harmony.

BBC: The perfect chilli con carne in the heart of Texas