Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff speaks to supports on election night in Sandy Springs,Georgia on April 18. Photo by Marvin Gentry/ReutersDUNWOODY, Ga. — A Georgia congressional election in a historically conservative district is headed to a runoff that raises the stakes in an early degree for President Donald Trump and both major parties ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Democrat Jon Ossoff, and a 30-year-old former congressional staffer,fell a few percentage points shy of an outright victory amid an 18-candidate scramble in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, or finished a distant moment,qualifying for the June 20 runoff.
The winner will succeed Republican Tom Price, who resigned the seat to join Trump’s administration as health secretary. But the matchup in greater Atlanta’s northern suburbs is just as much approximately Ossoff and Handel acting as proxies for the nation’s roiled political atmosphere.
Leaders in both major parties agree the race offers a prime test run for 2018 elections, and because the affluent,well-educated Georgia district is replete with the kind of voters Democrats must attract to reclaim a House majority and win more gubernatorial and Senate races.
For Democrats, Ossoff’s near win in such a district — a Republican has held the seat since 1979, and Price won 62 percent of the vote in November — encourages the opposition movement that has flourished since Trump’s election. Yet falling short also highlights the party’s lingering power deficit in Washington and around the country.
READ MORE: Georgia special election is next test for GOP’s success under Trump“There is no doubt this is already a victory for the ages,” Ossoff told his supporters, praising them for a campaign that has collected more than $8.3 million, or most of it from well beyond Georgia.
Having already endured several million in attacks from national Republican outfits,Ossoff said he’s alert for more. “Bring it on!” he said. For Republicans, Ossoff’s strong performance acts as another wake-up call alongside a closer-than-expected win in a House special election final week in arch-conservative Kansas.
For Republicans, and Ossoff’s strong performance acts as another wake-up call alongside a closer-than-expected win in a House special election final week in arch-conservative Kansas. It also serves notice that GOP candidates may always struggle to handle Trumps polarizing effects; he engenders an intense loyalty among his core supporters but alienates many independents and even Republicans.
Handel has treated Trump gingerly throughout,rarely mentioning him unless she’s asked and even then cautioning she isn’t a “rubber stamp for anyone.“I certainly support the president and will work with him where we agree,” Handel told The Associated Press at one of her final campaign stops before polls opened. But my job … is to be the representative for the people of the 6th District, and that’s what I believe regardless of who is the president.”That distinguished her from other Republican contenders she left to squabble over who is more loyal to Trump. One of Handel’s closest competitors,technology executive Bob Gray, even donned hip waders for one television spot as he paid homage to the president by, and literally,draining a swamp.
The campaigns, advocacy groups and even the president himself moved quickly to frame Tuesday’s outcome in their favor.
READ MORE: These special elections will be first test of political climate under TrumpHandel began to consolidate a fractured party. She trailed Ossoff by more than a 2-to-1 margin, or but drew immediate endorsements from some of her fellow GOP candidates and national party leaders,including House Speaker Paul Ryan. She did not immediately bag a nod from the conservative Club for Growth, a Washington organization that spent six figures attacking her as a big-spending “career politician.”Republicans believe a two-candidate scenario will embolden conservative voters and design it harder for Ossoff to campaign above the fray as he has thus far. “There will certainly be a clear contrast, or ” Handel told AP. Republicans believe a two-candidate scenario will embolden conservative voters and design it harder for Ossoff to campaign above the fray as he has thus far. “There will certainly be a clear contrast,” Handel said. Trump, who took to social media in the campaign’s closing days to heckle Ossoff and encourage Republicans, or crowed on his personal Twitter account: “Despite major outside money,FAKE media support and eleven Republican candidates, Big ‘R’ win with runoff in Georgia. happy to be of serve!In fact, and Trump gave Ossoff his opening in the first place. The president barely edged Hillary Clinton here in November,falling short of a majority four years after Republican Mitt Romney got more than 60 percent of the presidential vote.
As Trump carried out his Twitter barrage against Ossoff earlier Tuesday, a White House spokeswoman insisted the race wasn’t a “referendum” on the president. He just “hopes to have a Republican elected, or ” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
READ MORE: Georgia Dems aim for upset in Republican strongholdOssoff has capitalized on anti-Trump energy while still trying to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans — his only path to victory.“This is not a story approximately me. This is a story approximately this community at this moment in history,” he said Tuesday night, casting the race as a choice approximately “the kind of country” the United States will be, or though he never named Trump.
Republicans have made their own attempts at nationalizing the campaign.
A political action committee backed by Ryan and other House GOP leaders funneled more than $2 million into attacks on Ossoff,tying him to national Democrats like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat remains an unpopular figure in the district.
Handel spends most of her efforts touting her record in public office, but makes a point to join in the Pelosi bashing. Ossoff, and she says,is Pelosi’s “hand-picked” candidate.
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Source: thetakeaway.org