Trump a factor in Democrat’s surge in Georgia

But the 38-year-old Democrat, motivated by the opportunity to register her opposition to President Trump, has cast an early vote for Jon Ossoff, her party’s nominee in the nail-biter contest for a vacant House seat in suburban Atlanta.

“I don’t really like where we are as a country right now. I’m excited about the prospect of getting somebody in there that can stand their ground,” Berg, married with two young children, told the Washington Examiner, after answering her front door to a canvasser knocking on doors to turn out votes for Ossoff’s opponent, Republican Karen Handel.

Seven months after Trump’s unexpected victory left Democrats demoralized, a freshly energized liberal grassroots has lifted Ossoff into contention in a June 20 special election for this traditionally Republican congressional district.

Georgia’s Sixth has been in GOP hands for nearly 40 years; it was held by Tom Price since 2005, until he resigned this year to become Health and Human Services secretary.

But Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional staffer who lives just outside the district and can’t vote for himself, leads in the last four public polls. That adds up to an advantage of 4.8 percentage points (49.8 percent to 45 percent) in the latest polling averages.

For Handel, Trump is part of the problem.

The upscale, highly educated district chose him over Democrat Hillary Clinton in November by just 1.5 points, even as it re-elected Price with more than 60 percent of the vote. In the 2016 GOP president primary, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida finished first. Republicans here have lingering concerns about Trump’s leadership.

“I like his thoughts, but I don’t like his manner. He bumps his gums too much,” George Jackson, 90, said during an interview inside Old Hickory House, the barbecue joint he owns in Tucker, a Sixth District battleground.

“I’m not sorry he’s there, I just wish he would really, mature a little bit and be a little cooler with his approach,” added Jackson, a World War II veteran and self-described conservative who voted for Trump. “He offends a lot of people that are on his side because they don’t know — his tweeting I understood to a point but … he’s his own worst enemy.”

The campaign is on track to see a total of up to $50 million spent, a record for a House race. Republican operatives involved think that the Trump factor is being overblown. However, they concede that the race is a tossup.

Ossoff hardly mentions Trump, because running a nationalized race against the president would undercut his strategy. He’s campaigning as a centrist who claims that the biggest problem in Washington is wasteful spending.

Republicans’ biggest fears, and why the race is so close, they say, are the money Ossoff is raising — a staggering $23 million from Jan. 1 through the end of May — and missteps by Handel, 55, the former Georgia secretary of state.

Handel has kept a light campaign schedule, and raised nowhere near as much money as Ossoff. That has drawn criticism from GOP insiders, albeit privately. It has allowed Ossoff to dominate media coverage — and the airwaves.

Turn on the television here and Ossoff’s ads tend to play back to back to back. “I’ve seen every damn commercial. I’m done with it,” complained one middle-aged man who declined to give his name or discuss his views on the race.

The individual commented outside his home in Roswell to a canvasser with Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who was knocking on doors to drum up votes for Handel.

Republican groups, including CLF, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Trump’s official outside group, America First Policies, have stepped in to fill the breach, spending millions of dollars on advertising and field operations to turn out the vote.

Their plan to counter Ossoff’s claims of pragmatism is to make the race about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Internal GOP polling suggests this is the Republicans’ most effective messaging against Ossoff. “If Pelosi ever retired, we’d be in a lot of trouble,” a party strategist said.

Handel has adopted the same messaging. She told Ossoff repeatedly in their only scheduled televised prime-time debate that he is a Pelosi clone whose values are “3,000 miles away in San Francisco.” It could work.

During a mid-afternoon canvass in a wealthy Roswell neighborhood, with well-appointed homes lining quiet, leafy streets, several reliable Republican voters told the CLF volunteer that they had already voted early for Handel.

“She’s not going to raise my taxes,” Karen Shandor, 58, said, of her vote for Handel. Her opinion of Ossoff? “I thought he was a bit phony.” Those two lines were straight out of any number of ads being run by the Handel campaign and Republican groups.

Republicans monitoring the early vote say the GOP, which usually wins Election Day, is keeping pace with the Democrats, who usually dominate the early period. That’s an encouraging sign for nervous party insiders.