The Democrats’ much-touted candidate to represent HHS Secretary Tom Price’s former House district in suburban Atlanta doesn’t live there, a local television station reported yesterday afternoon.
The surprising early leader in the special election to replace Tom Price in Congress doesn’t live in the district.
Democrat Jon Ossoff lives about 10 minutes south of the district, according to a campaign spokesman. Ossoff grew up in the district and has been registered to vote in it for many years. Ossoff’s parents also live in the district, and Ossoff moved out of the 6th and into an Emory-area neighborhood to be close to his girlfriend of 13 years, who started medical school.
As soon as she finishes school, Ossoff’s campaign said he plans to move back into the district.
Maybe it doesn’t matter — in some House races it never amounts to much of an issue. For example, Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., was a former legislator from Maryland when he picked and switched states to run for Congress in 2014. He won.
But it might matter a little bit more in a district where the Democrat already has an uphill climb.
The 6th District is heavily Republican, and Price consistently won it with more than 60 percent of the vote in all three elections since the last redistricting. But Democrats’ hopes rest on two things: First, the fact that Donald Trump did very poorly there, winning the district by only about 1.5 percentage points; second, that their base is clearly riled and energized and showing up in healthy numbers for other special elections.
The jungle primary, in which there are now 18 candidates, is scheduled for April 18. A June runoff between the top two vote-getters is highly likely.
