By Rich Dunn
The Georgia-6 special election turned out to be a media headfake. Karen Handel, the former Republican Secretary of State with universal name recognition in a deep red district, eeked out a 3.2-point victory over Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old Democrat with no experience in elective office and no prior name recognition, and who didn’t even live in the district. This narrow victory was described as a “Democratic defeat,” which is a little much considering that Georgia-6 has been Republican since the 1970’s.
The reason for all the media attention wasn’t to see whether the Democratic minority in the 115th Congress could be narrowed by one seat. No, the whole point was to see how much things have changed in the public mind since the November election, when Republican incumbent Tom Price won reelection by a 23.4-point margin. Obviously a whole lot has indeed changed, a point not lost on House Republicans.
GA-6 2017 Special Election
Karen Handel (R): 134,595 51.9%
Jon Ossoff (D): 124,893 48.1%
Handel’s Margin of Victory: 3.8%
GA-6 2016 General Election
Tom Price (R): 201,088 61.7%
Rodney Stooksbury (D): 124,917 38.3%
Price’s Margin of Victory: 23.4%
The sleeper on Tuesday was the special election in South Carolina’s 5th congressional district, which pitted two members of the state legislature against one another in a low-profile race that wasn’t expected to be close. As it turned out, Republican Ralph Norman raised $1.25 million and took 51.1% of the vote, while Democrat Archie Parnell raised only $763,000 yet received 47.9% of the vote. That’s a 3.2% margin, even narrower than in Georgia-6. The bottom line: Republicans are in real trouble in the 2018 election, and it doesn’t matter how much money they throw at it.
SC-5 2017 Special Election
Ralph Norman (R): 44,889 51.6%
Archie Parnell (D): 42,053 48.4%
Norman’s Margin of Victory: 3.2%
SC-5 2016 General Election
Mick Mulvaney (R): 161,669 60.4%
Fran Person (D): 105,772 39.6%
Mulvaney’s Margin of Victory: 20.8%
