Republicans nervously await results from Georgia Tuesday, hoping to avoid a watershed upset that could derail their ambitious agenda and drive a wedge between their congressional majorities and President Trump.
Republican Karen Handel, 55, and Democrat Jon Ossoff, 30, were tied heading into Election Day, after waging a record-breaking, $50 million campaign for the 6th Congressional District. But with control of a conservative-leaning, suburban seat on the line, Republicans have more to lose.
Seats like this in metro Atlanta that have formed the backbone of GOP power for decades but where Trump is only marginally popular and struggled against Democrat Hillary Clinton last year, will determine the fate of the House majority in 2018.
A loss could complicate passage of legislation to partially repeal Obamacare, a major priority of the conservative base, and send centrist Republicans on Capitol Hill scurrying for cover from the political fallout Trump has been generating for them at home.
“If Handel loses, it’ll be tougher to get our members to take tough votes,” a senior Republican House aide said, on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.
The polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. It’s unclear if last week’s targeted shooting at Republican congressmen practing for a charity baseball game, perpetrated by a progressive activist, would alter the contours of the race. Insiders from both parties speculated that it might but conceded they had no data to go on.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., was hit and seriously injured during shooting.
When Republican Tom Price resigned in February to become Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, what would normally have been a sleepy special election to fill a vacant congressional seat unfolded as a national proxy war over Trump’s leadership, led by liberal activists intent on registering their strong opposition to the president.
They flooded Ossoff’s campaign with more than $23 million, and contributed millions of dollars more in volunteer man-hours. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee kicked in another $6 million in advertising and field operations, including an extra focus on African-American turnout.
Those resources, unheard of for a single congressional race, and Ossoff’s carefully calibrated centrist messaging, put this seat in play, even though it has been in GOP hands for nearly 40 years and Price was re-elected with more than 60 percent of the vote. The district only narrowly voted for Trump over Clinton, however.
“I think it’ll be really close,” said Ellen Carmichael, Price’s press secretary when he served in Congress and now president of The Lafayette Company.
“It’s a mainline, conservative GOP district. It has the only three counties in the state that went for someone besides Trump,” she added, referring to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who finished second to Trump in the 2016 Georgia presidential primary. “They’re Rubio Republicans: conservative, but not bombastic. Pro-business; lots of transplants.”
Protecting the seat, and boosting the underfunded Handel, has been a team effort for the GOP, although Trump been of limited utility outside of raising money for the former Georgia secretary of state and using social media to encourag Republicans to turn out and vote.
Doing the heavy lifting were the National Republican Congressional Committee; the Trump-led Republican National Committee; and Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. The groups collectively provided the field, advertising and data operations Handel needed to compete with Ossoff’s juggernaut campaign.
The results are going to test a crucial element of the Republican strategy for 2018. Can reliable Republican voters who don’t tend to show up in midterm elections, and those who have traditionally voted Republican but are unhappy with Trump, be activated and kept in the fold by scaring them with the prospect of giving the speaker’s gavel back to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif?
In the Georgia race, it could boil down to whether that approach resonates with about 25,000 voters that are receivng extra attention from Republican groups and are likely to make their final decision on Tuesday.
“The choice is going to be very clear: Do Georgians want someone representing Nancy Pelosi or do Georgians want someone representing them? This is going to be tight, but we’re confident we’ll win,” NRCC spokesman Matt Gorman said.
Democrats are countering by highlighting Handel’s many years of involvement in state and local politics. They credit Handel’s Republican opponents in the round one of the special election for raising the issue, which their polling confirms is a negative, and say they tried to continue it word for word once the runoff campaign began.
“We were on TV within 48 hours of the runoff, hitting her with the same message that Republicans had been hitting her for in the primary, that she’s a self-serving politician who’s always running for office,” DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly said. “It was valuable to be able have that message continuity the whole time.”
