$50 million dollars were spent on the Georgia-06 Congressional campaign, and now the northern Atlanta suburbs have picked Karen Handel to represent them in Washington. Ossoff did all the right things — raised money, knocked on doors, got tons of press — and because Georgia’s Sixth district is unique, those tactics backfired.
Jon Ossoff’s campaign spent over four times the amount that Karen Handel’s did. She won a hotly contested race on the (comparatively) cheap because she appealed to people who are highly religious and highly educated. That’s who you find in GA-06. How do I know? I grew up there.
Mainstream media outlets speculated that Karen Handel would have to run from her legacy at the Susan G. Komen Foundation. As the breast cancer charity’s Senior Vice President, Handel cut off grant funding to Planned Parenthood. Handel resigned days later, and donations to Komen dropped by over 25 percent in the next year. The decision was widely regarded as a public relations disaster.
The Bible Belt sees this as somebody, anybody, finally sticking it to Planned Parenthood. She called them bullies – literally wrote a book called Planned Bullyhood – and the organization proved her right, by donating over $700,000 to her opponent’s campaign. In a place where one’s religious affiliation is so important that it largely determines one’s social circle, voters thought Handel picked the right fight. That moral stand was worth more to her campaign than Planned Parenthood’s money was to Ossoff.
Handel also had the advantage of being well known. She was the first Republican to ever serve as Georgia’s Secretary of State. She has since run for Governor and Senate – both failed campaigns, but campaigns that put her in the news, talking about her political positions. Handel has been a fixture in the headlines for over a decade. They say “familiarity breeds contempt,” but in a traditional place with old values and new houses designed to look like old houses, familiarity breeds comfort.
Ossoff had to catch up to Handel’s name recognition. He mobilized 11,000 volunteers, many of whom were tasked with knocking on doors to talk to potential voters. Door-knocking is a standard part of traditional campaign strategy. Ossoff ended up using too much of a good thing, leading some voters to put up yard signs reading “Get Your Ossoff My Lawn.”
Handel had another advantage over Ossoff: While both campaigns had lots of money from outside the district, Handel’s major endorsements came from Georgians. Ossoff could tout his many celebrity endorsements (Alissa Milano and Rosie Gray, for two of them). In a place where Hollywood is seen as distant, elitist, and worst of all, a bubble – those celebrity endorsements backfired. Southerners are deeply sensitive to outsiders showing up and telling them what to do. This district is no exception. In fact, in a place so highly educated, the notion that an outsider knows better is just plain offensive.
Ossoff represented an opportunity for the district’s Democrats (and yes, we’ve got thousands) to finally be heard. These are people who have been outvoted for years. As a conservative now living in DC, I empathize with them. Their enthusiasm made the race competitive.
Many of GA-06’s Republican voters were turned off by Trump’s language and brash style. Karen Handel, however, is socially conservative and decidedly un-Trumpian (though their policies align quite closely, their styles could hardly be more different).
On election day, voters knew that Karen Handel opposed Obamacare, supported AHCA, and opposed Gang of 8. They knew that Jon Ossoff was not Karen Handel. She had a defined platform, he had record-breaking amounts of cash. And in a place driven by families, the traditional candidate won out.
