Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, which is located in the Atlanta metro area and includes cities such as Roswell and Sandy Springs, is currently without a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Its longtime Republican representative, Tom Price, resigned from his seat in Congress to take a job in President Trump’s Cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price, whose nomination was briefly imperiled by an insider trading scandal involving more than $300,000 in potentially illegal stock purchases, was nonetheless confirmed by the Senate since, although no Democrats voted to confirm him, all 52 Senate Republicans did. Price had long held down his seat with ease, routinely winning landslide reelection victories. His seat always seemed safely Republican, but that was before Trump.
While Republican Mitt Romney carried the Sixth District in 2012 with 60.8% of the vote to President Obama’s 37.5%, Donald Trump only got 48.3% of the district’s votes compared to Hillary Clinton’s 46.8%. In other words, there was a 21.8% shift in the district’s presidential vote: from the 23.3-point Republican victory in 2012 to the measly 1.5-point Republican victory in 2016. Clearly, Georgia’s Sixth District isn’t too keen on Agent Orange.
Something about Trump prompted a huge segment of loyal Republican voters to stay at home or vote for his Democratic opponent.
The district will be holding a nonpartisan blanket primary on April 18th, where candidates from all parties will appear on one ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote on April 18th, the two candidates with the most votes will advance to a runoff to be held on June 20th. At present, the top two candidates appear to be Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel, although a number of other candidates are running.
Ossoff is an investigate filmmaker and former national security staffer who has helped expose everything from some of ISIS’s crimes against humanity to judicial corruption in Ghana. Ossoff also has the support of Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. Congressman Lewis is a strong opponent of Trump and declined to attend Trump’s inauguration.
Ossoff has indicated he will be tough on Trump; even if he had indicated a friendliness to Trump, he’d still be preferable to a Republican candidate, because every vote for a Democratic House Representative is a vote for Congress to carry out its duty to investigate and hold the White House accountable.
Karen Handel, who is Ossoff’s main opponent in the race, is a Republican, Georgia’s former Secretary of State and the former vice president of public policy at the Susan G Komen Foundation. She resigned her position at Komen in 2012 due to her role in a failed attempt to get the breast cancer charity to cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood. She then wrote a book about it called “Planned Bullyhood” (because apparently providing health care to low-income women is bullying?). She has done nothing to indicate she’ll be anything but a rubber stamp for Trump. That could prove to be a weakness in a district where 51.7% of voters chose a candidate other than him.
This race is important. If Democrats win this traditionally Republican seat, it will send a huge message to Trump and Washington Republicans that the country is NOT having any of their nonsense. Even if Ossoff only comes close, it will serve as a signal that those of us who promised to #resist meant it. One more Democrat in The House could help save the Affordable Care Act or stop Republicans from further dismantling LGBT+ rights. And so far, we’re off to a good start: Ossoff’s campaign has already raised nearly $1 million in partnership with the progressive website Daily Kos, from more than 50,000 donors across the country. It’s clear that the left is seizing upon our first opportunity to fight back. We need to pay attention to this race—and then we need to join the fight.
For more information about Jon Ossoff’s campaign, go to electjon.com.
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