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Karen Handel, Republican candidate for Georgias 6th Congressional District, with husband Steve Handel at her side, gives her acceptance speech to supporters at her election night party at the Hyatt Regency at Villa Christina in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Bita Honarvar /Reuters

DUNWOODY, Ga. Republican Karen Handel won a nationally watched congressional election Tuesday in Georgia, and she thanked President Donald Trump after she avoided an upset that would have rocked Washington ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Incomplete returns show Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, winning almost 53 percent of the vote over Democrat Jon Ossoff, who won just over 47 percent in Georgias 6th Congressional District.

A special thanks to the president of the United States of America, she said late Tuesday night as her supporters chanted, Trump! Trump! Trump!

It was Handels most public embrace of the man whose tenuous standing in this well-educated, suburban enclave made a previously safe Republican district close to begin with.

Handels margin allows Republicans a sigh of relief after whats being recognized as the most expensive House race in U.S history, with a price tag that may exceed $50 million.

Yet the result in a historically conservative district still offers Republicans a warning that Trump, for better or worse, will dominate the looming campaign cycle. Georgias outcome follows similar results in Montana, Kansas and South Carolina, where Republicans won special House races by much narrower margins than they managed as recently as November.

Republicans immediately crowed over winning a seat that Democrats spent $30 million trying to flip. Democrats from coast to coast threw everything they had at this race, and Karen would not be defeated, House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

Democrats still must defend their current districts and win 24 GOP-held seats to regain a House majority next November. Party leaders profess encouragement from the trends, but the latest losses mean they will have to rally donors and volunteers after a tough stretch of special elections.

Handel, 55, will become the first Republican woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House, according to state party officials.

Her win comes after losing bids for governor in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, and it builds on a business and political career she built after leaving an abusive home as a teen.

Its that fighting spirit, that perseverance and tenacity that I will take to Washington, she said Tuesday night.

Handel is the latest in a line of Republicans who have represented the district since 1979, beginning with Newt Gingrich, who would become House speaker. Most recently, Tom Price resigned in February to join Trumps administration. The president himself struggled here, though, edging Democrat Hillary Clinton but falling short of a majority among an affluent, well-educated electorate that typically has given Republican nominees better than 60 percent of the vote.

Handel emphasized that Republican pedigree often in her campaign and again in her victory speech.

She also noted throughout the campaign that she has lived in the district for 25 years, unlike Ossoff, who grew up in the district but lives in Atlanta, a few miles south of the 6th Districts southern border.

In victory, she commended Ossoff and pledged to work for his supporters. She noted last weeks shooting of Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and said politics has become too embittered.

My pledge is to be part of the solution, to focus on governing, she said.

Democrat Jon Ossoff addresses his supporters after his defeat in Georgias 6th Congressional District special election in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters

Ossoff, taking the stage at his own party after conceding the race, told his supporters his campaign is the beginning of something much bigger than us, adding, The fight goes on.

Party organizations, independent political action committees and donors from Los Angeles to Boston sent a cascade of money into a race, filling metro Atlantas airwaves with ads and its 6th District neighborhoods with hordes of paid canvassers.

Contrary to the chants at Handels victory party, she insisted for months that voters choice had little to do with Trump. She rarely mentioned him, despite holding a closed-door fundraiser with him earlier this spring. She pointed voters instead to her proven conservative record as a state and local elected official.

Her protestations aside, Handel often embraced the national tenor of the race, joining a GOP chorus that lambasted Ossoff as a dangerous liberal who was hand-picked by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She also welcomed a parade of national GOP figures to Atlanta to help her raise money, with Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan holding fundraisers following Trumps April visit.

It was enough to help Handel raise more than $5 million, not a paltry sum in a congressional race, but barely a fifth of Ossoffs fundraising haul. The Republican campaign establishment, however, helped make up the difference. A super PAC backed by Ryan spent $7 million alone.

On policy, she mostly echoes party leaders. She said shed have voted for the House Republican health care bill, though she sometimes misrepresented its provisions in debates with Ossoff. She touts traditional supply side economics, going so far as to say during one debate that she does not support a living wage her way of explaining her opposition to a minimum-wage increase.

READ MORE: A guide to Georgias special election

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Republican Handel beats Democrat Ossoff in Georgia special election - PBS NewsHour

Charleston Post Courier

Democrat to run against Sanford for Congress, tie him to Trump The State (blog) Mark Sanford has drawn a new challenger for his congressional seat - this time a Democrat. Joe Cunningham, a Charleston attorney, announced Wednesday he would run for the Democratic nomination in the coastal 1st District. Cunningham is the first ... First Democratic challenger declares bid to unseat South Carolina Republican Mark SanfordCharleston Post Courier all 3 news articles »

The rest is here:
Democrat to run against Sanford for Congress, tie him to Trump - The State (blog)

by Charlie Spiering20 Jun 20170

Laughing my #Ossoff, she wrote on Twitter after it was clear that Handel was winning.

Conway also took a shot at the pundits who predicted a loss for Trump and Republicans in Georgia.

Thanks to everyone who breathlessly and snarkily proclaimed GA06 as a referendum on POTUS, she wrote. You were right.

Conway thanked Handel for being a grownup and running on the issues while actually living in the district she was running to represent.

Welcome to Congress, she wrote and highlighted Handels call to lift up this nation so that we can find a more civil way to deal with our disagreements.

Big Government, democrats, Georgia, Jon Ossoff, KellyAnne Conway

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'Laughing My Ossoff' Kellyanne Conway Celebrates Humiliating Democrat Defeat - Breitbart News

Im not sure where I fit in.

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) is a stalwart of the Democratic Party from what used to be the blue state of Michigan. And unlike anyone else in her party, Dingell saw President Trump coming. She warned, pleaded and cajoled to no avail. Now, she feels like a stranger in her own party.

LISTEN HERE

For more conversations like this, subscribe to Cape UP on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

The Democratic Partys in disarray, Dingell told me in the latest episode of Cape Up. I dont know where I belong. Ive said that. I sometimes feel like I have no home even in the Democratic Caucus here. She went on to say, We need to put ourselves in other peoples shoes and understand where their fear is coming from. Dingell also added this: We took people for granted. We, for a long time, thought we had that worker, men and women, that union worker. Weve lost them because we stopped talking to them.

[I said Clinton was in trouble with the voters I represent. Democrats didnt listen.]

Dingell said her Dearborn, Mich., constituents dont think we [Democrats] understand them. In the battle between automakers and environmentalists, Dingell is particularly clear-eyed. Id really love to bring permanent peace between California and Michigan, she said, noting that what her car constituents want is certainty. If everybody agrees as they did on the fuel economy standards, then the companies have what they need, which is economic and political certainty.

That part of the conversation on intraparty squabbling, which began with Dingell saying, Weve got to stop demonizing each other, was an echo of what she said at the start of the interview. Coming the day after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and three others were shot on a Virginia baseball field by an angry, left-wing, anti-Trump partisan, Dingells message had added resonance. Weve got to figure out a way to tone down the rhetoric, that we have to stop this demonization of each other, she said. We have to find a way to respect each other, to listen to each other.

[Picture a ripe, red tomato and how this is the key to citizen engagement.]

Listen to the podcast to hear Dingell talk more about the degradation of national political discourse, how she is battling believers of fake news and how the members of the large Muslim American community in her district are feeling.

Theyre very afraid, she said. Theyre afraid that something, somebody could physically attack them.

Cape Up is Jonathans weekly podcast talking to key figures behind the news and our culture. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever else you listen to podcasts.

Link:
One Democrat knew Trump would win. Now she struggles to find a place in her own party. - Washington Post (blog)

Mr. Ossoff has pursued a two-pronged strategy, aiming to peel off a fraction of Republican-leaning voters with a sober, centrist message while mobilizing a broader group of moderates and liberals who are infrequent voters at best and seldom turn out in special elections.

He could win by carrying just 3 or 4 percent of the voters who backed Republican candidates other than Ms. Handel in April. He could also win by turning out enough supporters who did not vote in April.

The final polls showed an extremely close race, with neither candidate holding a clear advantage.

Nearly 150,000 people have already cast ballots in early voting nearly three times the early vote in April, when only 193,000 ballots were cast over all. Nearly 40,000 people who have voted early in the runoff did not vote at all in April.

Both campaigns have welcomed the additional voters. But the new voters are far younger, somewhat more diverse, and much less likely ever to have voted in a Democratic or Republican primary than the voters who turned out in April. All of which bodes well for Mr. Ossoff.

Georgia often takes a long time to count its votes, and the April ballot was no exception. The first returns the early votes of people who cast their ballots at polling places, rather than on paper will not be conclusive, either.

Those early returns will be more Republican this time, because nearly 50,000 Republican-leaning voters who cast ballots on Election Day in April decided to vote early in the runoff. In addition, many Democratic-leaning in-person voters from April chose to vote by mail in the runoff.

As a result, do not expect meaningful clues to the final result until we learn the votes of people who went to the polls on Tuesday.

Candidates and outside groups have spent roughly $55 million in a battle over a U.S. House seat vacated by Tom Price, the health and human services secretary.

For all the early and absentee ballots already cast, the race is competitive enough that Election Day could prove decisive. And, perhaps showing how badly they need a lift, some supporters of Ms. Handel have seized on a liberal, anti-Trump gunmans attack at a Republican congressional baseball practice last week as a boon, thinking it could jolt at least some complacent voters into turning out for her.

I think the shooting is going to win this election for us, said Brad Carver, a Republican official in Georgia at the county and state level.

A little-known conservative group bought a small amount of television time on Fox News over the weekend for an ad showing emergency crews carrying victims of the attack on stretchers. The same unhinged leftists cheering last weeks shooting are all backing Jon Ossoff, and if he wins, they win, an announcer intones.

Ms. Handels campaign denounced the ad but did not call for it to be taken off the air.

Republicans have held the Sixth District for nearly 40 years. A loss would reverberate in Washington, imperiling the partys already-stalled agenda and prompting some incumbents to retire rather than seek re-election. Most immediately, it would threaten the Republican health care overhaul, which is expected to come up for a Senate vote in the next two weeks. Democrats, already enjoying a strong recruiting season, would see a bumper crop of candidates for 2018.

But Democrats who have already fallen short in special elections for House seats in Kansas and Montana, where their candidates faced stronger opposition sorely need more than a moral victory. They need to show they can compete and prevail in the kind of wealthy, highly educated districts that represent their most promising path to a House majority next year.

Tuesdays result may sharply affect congressional recruitment, retirements and fund-raising. But for Democrats chances of recapturing the House in 2018, the lesson is the same whether Mr. Ossoff wins with 51 percent or loses with 49.

Mr. Ossoffs performance has already confirmed that Republicans in wealthy, conservative-leaning districts will be burdened by Mr. Trumps unpopularity. Previously safe Republican incumbents in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Miami and Orange County, Calif., could all be vulnerable next year.

The bottom line: A close race in Georgias Sixth District is consistent with a strong Democratic performance in next years midterm elections strong enough, perhaps, to retake the House. A few thousand votes either way wont change that.

Though the Georgia battle has consumed the countrys political class, another special election on Tuesday will decide who succeeds Mick Mulvaney, who represented South Carolinas highly conservative Fifth Congressional District before he was named director of the Office of Management and Budget.

National Democrats have done little to compete in the district, which remains strongly supportive of Mr. Trump, and Ralph W. Norman, a Republican former state legislator, is widely expected to defeat Archie Parnell, a Democrat and former Goldman Sachs tax expert. But Mr. Parnell had more money to spend than Mr. Norman in the final weeks, and some South Carolina Democrats expect a surprisingly competitive finish.

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Georgia's Special Election Comes to a Nail-Biting Finish - New York Times