DUNWOODY, Ga. – An upstart Democrat leads a special election in a conservative Georgia congressional district, but incomplete returns show he’s barely clinging to the majority required to pull off a shocking upset in the Atlanta suburbs.
Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional staffer, sought to parlay opposition to President Donald Trump into a victory that would rebuke the White House and embolden Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
With early voting totals and about half of precincts counted, Ossoff hovered right at the majority threshold required to win an 18-candidate primary outright in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. But tens of thousands of votes remained uncounted, and Ossoff’s lead has been shrinking as more precincts roll in across a district that has been held by a Republican since Newt Gingrich was elected here in 1978.
The trends point increasingly toward a June 20 runoff that would pit Ossoff against the top Republican vote-getter. Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel is a distant second behind Ossoff but has a comfortable lead over other Republican candidates.
Republicans nationally and in Georgia acknowledged before polls opened that Ossoff would top the slate of Republicans, Democrats and independents who appeared together on one primary ballot. The question was whether Ossoff could win outright
The winner will succeed Tom Price, who resigned to become Trump’s health secretary.
Trump took to Twitter urging Republicans to cast ballots late Tuesday. He even mocked Ossoff’s choice of residence – outside the district.
“Just learned that Jon (at)Ossoff, who is running for Congress in Georgia, doesn’t even live in the district. Republicans, get out and vote!” the president wrote.
The contest is testing both parties’ strategies for the upcoming national election cycle. National attention, already significant, intensified after last week’s closer-than-expected Republican victory in a Kansas special House election.
Trump did not perform as well as other Republicans last November in the Georgia district, an affluent, well-educated swath filled with the kind of voters Democrats need if they hope to reclaim a House majority next year.
Republicans currently hold a 238-193 advantage in the chamber.
Ossoff would be a “disaster” in Congress, Trump declared earlier Tuesday on social media, a day after he blasted Ossoff as a “super liberal.”
Despite Trump’s Twitter barrage, the White House insisted the race isn’t about the president. “I wouldn’t use the word referendum,” said spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “I think he hopes to have a Republican elected.”
An investigative filmmaker, Ossoff raised more than $8.3 million, mostly from donors far from the northern suburbs of Atlanta. That sum dwarfs what any Republican candidate has spent on the contest.
Ossoff has energized liberals and younger voters, while also aiming for disaffected independents and moderate Republicans.
Cedrick Gulley, a 25-year-old Georgia State University student from the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, said Tuesday that Democrats were “a little lazy” in November, but now “there’s an emergence of people fighting.”
Ossoff has pledged to fight Trump when he “embarrasses” the country. But he’s also said he would “work with anybody in Washington who respects your tax dollars.”
That’s a nod to the Republicans and independents he’d need to win – whether Tuesday or in a runoff.
It still wasn’t enough for voters like Matt West, a 45-year-old financial planner from Roswell. “He lives outside the district, he’s a Democrat, and I just don’t believe that he’d stand up to (House Minority Leader) Nancy Pelosi if the district wanted him to,” West said.
West said he voted for the Republican Handel, an establishment favorite and has led the Republican field.
Republican groups ran a blitz of ads trying to tie Ossoff to Pelosi; a political action committee backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan has spent more than $2 million on those and other attacks.
As for residency, Ossoff acknowledges that he lives just south of the district, in Atlanta, so that his girlfriend is close to her work at Emory University’s medical complex.
Among other top Republicans in the race, technology executive Bob Gray and two former state senators, Dan Moody and Judson Hill, are battling Handel in a fight for the No. 2 spot.
Handel has maintained distance from Trump, rarely discussing him unless asked. Gray has called himself a “willing partner” for the president.
National Republicans say any of the four competitive Republican candidates could defeat Ossoff in a second round. They predict conservative voters would be energized in a Republican vs. Democrat scenario.
“Republican voters are not going to sit by and let this district go to a Democrat,” Handel said at one of her final campaign stops.
Associated Press reporter Catherine Lucey contributed from Washington.
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