Dave Brat: Meet the Candidate Who Beat Eric Cantor

— -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has lost his GOP primary to conservative challenger Dave Brat in Virginia's 7th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press.

Here's a profile -- edited to reflect Tuesday's primary -- that ABC News' John Parkinson did of Brat in May:

Meet Dave Brat, an economics and ethics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, who launched a long-shot -- and ultimately successful -- bid to oust House Majority Leader Eric Cantor from his seat representing Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

Brat, who admits that he has supported several Cantor candidacies over the years, says he mounted his improbable primary campaign because the House GOP’s No. 2 leader has lost touch with his constituents, “veering from the Republican creed.”

“Years ago he had a good conservative track record, but now he’s veered off,” Brat told ABC News during an interview on Capitol Hill in May. “If you go to Heritage and look at their score, I think he’s at about a 53 right now. I mean, that’s an F-minus.”

Heritage Action’s scorecard tracks Republican votes, co-sponsorships and other legislative activity to gauge how conservative members of Congress are performing. Cantor actually receives a 52 percent, which ranks seventh among eight Virginia House Republicans.The quirky challenger always knew he had a tough road to victory in the primary.

“Most of these [primary] races don’t kick in until about 30 days prior,” he said. “Now everyone’s looking, what’s the race? It’s an open primary and it’s just Eric and I on the ticket.”

Brat, 49, wasn't the first primary challenger Cantor has faced. The Richmond Republican smoked primary challenger Floyd Bayne in 2012 by nearly 60 percentage points before cruising to a 17-point victory in the general election.

But with anti-incumbency fervor at an all-time high, Cantor’s team said back in May they weren't overlooking Brat, although at the time they said they didn't "see him getting a great deal of traction.

“We’re on the ground, running the campaign,” Cantor campaign spokesman and senior strategist Ray Allen said in a phone interview. “We take every figure seriously and do our own due diligence. It is what it is.”

“The race was once viewed as a long-shot, [but] it’s tightening now,” Brat said. “We’re well over double, triple what we had on the books just a month ago and so now we’re getting the national attention I always hoped.”

Brat complained that Cantor, 50, has a “crony-capitalist mentality” to take care of the corporate sector ahead of the interests of small businesses.

“On the conservative scorecard, on the free market votes, he’s doing everything wrong,” Brat said. “He’s not following what folks in his district want him to do and it’s hurting the country.”

Brat calls himself as a “free market guy,” and says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also pledged never to increase taxes and to stick to a five-year promise not to vote to increase the debt limit.