Ossoff falls just short in Georgia special election as GOP gets wakeup call
Ossoff: Defied the odds, shattered expectations 02:09
Story highlights
- It was a fierce race to replace HHS Secretary Tom Price in Georgia's 6th District
- The district has been reliably Republican, though the vote margin was slim in November
Atlanta (CNN)Democrat
Jon Ossoff fell just short Tuesday of capturing a House seat in a
longtime conservative stronghold in Georgia, serving a reminder to
Republicans of President Donald Trump's unpopularity.
Ossoff
received 48.1% of the vote, shy of the 50% he needed to win outright.
He and the other top vote-getter -- Republican candidate Karen Handel,
who received 19.8% -- will now face off in a runoff election in June, a
likely uphill climb for Democrats now that the Republican vote in a
reliably GOP district will be consolidated behind one candidate.
The
hotly contested race carried major implications as a gauge of the
President's popularity -- and Trump himself seemed to grasp the high
stakes, playing a direct role in its closing days.
Democrats saw it as an
opportunity to drive a wedge between Trump and congressional Republicans
fearful that he could drag down the party in the 2018 midterms -- while
also delivering a psychic boost to an energized progressive base.
They
nearly pulled it off. It was a strong showing for the Democrats in an
unusual "jungle primary" in a district that Mitt Romney won by 23 points
in 2012, and where Republican Rep. Tom Price was re-elected with nearly
62% of the vote in 2016 before being named Trump's health and human
services secretary.
Trump releases robocall in GA special election 01:24
"There
is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages," Ossoff told
supporters late Tuesday night. "That no matter what the outcome is
tonight -- whether we take it all or whether we fight on -- we have
survived the odds. We have shattered expectations. We are changing the
world. And your voices are going to ring out across this state and
across this country."
Even after Ossoff left the stage, many supporters stuck around, chanting, "Flip the Sixth!"
Trump 'glad to be of help'
A
little-known 30-year-old former congressional staffer, Ossoff quickly
emerged as an online fundraising superstar. Progressive activists led by
the liberal blog Daily Kos pumped $8.3 million into Ossoff's campaign
largely because it represented their best odds out of four special
elections for previously Republican-held House seats of flipping one and
sending a message.
Trump erased
any doubt the contest was all about him when he waded into the race at
the last minute. Trump recorded a robocall to Republicans in the
district and attacked Ossoff on Twitter repeatedly on Monday and
Tuesday. The President tweeted after midnight that he was "Glad to be of
help!" -- even though the district was competitive largely because of
Trump's unpopularity with the white-collar white voters who make up much
of its voting base.
Handel said on Twitter Wednesday morning that Trump had called her.
Handel
told CNN's "New Day," that despite preventing a Ossoff from an out
right when, the situation in the district is "all hands on deck" for
Republicans.
"We know what is at
stake here and I don't think that this is about any one person," Handel
told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "We all have to rise above it -- that it is
about the district that has a long legacy of Republican leadership."
The
near-death experience for Republicans -- on the heels of one a week
earlier in Kansas, where Democrats nearly flipped a deep-red district --
could still have the effect of leading GOP lawmakers in competitive
states and districts to seek distance from the President, making it even
more difficult for Trump to advance his agenda on Capitol Hill.
In
Tuesday's results, Democrats saw more evidence of a playing field for
the 2018 midterm elections that has drastically expanded -- and given
the party's 10 senators up for re-election in states that Trump won some
breathing room.
"To me, what's
amazing is that we continue to see this level shift across the country, a
20-point swing, that puts about 123 Republican seats potentially in
play," said Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas.
"At
that point, very little is off the map, and getting the 24 seats we
need to take back the House is suddenly a real possibility, GOP
gerrymander or not," Moulitsas said. "It also potentially puts the
Senate in play, while certainly protecting our endangered red-state
incumbents. All of this, and we're still in Trump's supposed 'honeymoon'
period."
Attention shifts to runoff election
Republicans
have long believed that -- particularly with such high turnout in
Tuesday's contest -- Ossoff would near his high-water mark in the jungle
primary and have little room to grow his support in the runoff.
There
are few parallels to draw because the race is a special election with
unique dynamics, and because of the unusual primary in which the top two
finishers would advance, regardless of party.
One
that would trouble Democrats and reassure Republicans came in a 2006
special election for California's 50th District House seat. There,
Democrat Francine Busby won 44% of the vote in the jungle primary --
well ahead of Republican Brian Bilbray's 15%. But in the one-on-one
runoff, Busby was stagnant, earning 45%, while Bilbray surged to 49%
support in the conservative district.
Democrats,
meanwhile, saw Handel -- whose 55th birthday was Tuesday -- as the
Republican against whom they would fare the best, in part because of her
conservative stances on social issues and attacks on Planned
Parenthood.
Handel lost a 2010
race for governor and a 2014 Republican Senate primary and was accused
of overspending as a county commissioner in a 2017 jungle primary attack
ad from the conservative Club for Growth. She was hammered by
Republican foes in the runoff who aligned themselves with Trump --
raising the prospect that those Trump voters could skip the runoff
entirely.
Handel's efforts as
secretary of state to purge Georgia's voter rolls by requiring voters to
prove their citizenship led to fights with the Justice Department's
Civil Rights Division.
In an
interview last month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez
-- who led the Civil Rights Division during President Barack Obama's
first term -- said voters would hear "a lot" about Handel's efforts to
require voters to prove their citizenship if she advanced to the runoff.
"Secretaries of state matter, and
when they're good, then people can actually vote who are eligible to
vote. And when they're following the ALEC playbook of the far right,
they make it harder for people to vote," Perez said, referring to the
conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.
Perez told "New Day" on Wednesday said Trump was too celebratory too early.
"He
spiked the football quite early, Chris," Perez told CNN's Chris Cuomo.
"(I'd) rather be Jon Ossoff than (Republican candidate) Karen Handel
right now."
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