Dem fixer weighs in on U.S. political atmosphere
Democratic consultant Scott Ferson joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” yesterday to talk about Georgia’s heavily Republican 6th Congressional District special election Tuesday to fill Secretary of Human and Health Services Tom Price’s old seat. Democrat Jon Ossoff’s strong run prompted a “Flip the Sixth” slogan. Ossoff will be in a
runoff in June with Karen Handel, who led a crowded Republican field:
Q: So talk to us about the race.
A: A couple of things struck me, but the thing that I was really angry about is five hours after the polls close at 7 o’clock we don’t know how to count votes? This is ridiculous that we’re waiting around. Depending on whatever side that you’re on, there’s got to be a better way to figure out how to report votes after they’ve been cast. It’s interesting, though. Ossoff, he got 92,000 votes. If he had gotten another 4,000 votes there wouldn’t have been a runoff. I mean that’s really how close a guy nobody had heard of a couple of months ago came to capturing this seat. And I agree, it’s a Republican seat, it’s an uphill battle for the Democrat. But 4,000 votes and it would have been really big news I think we would be talking about today.
Q: Voters who are Democratic are so energized and really getting out to the polls that the idea that a Democrat in the thick of a Republican Georgia could potentially win was just as big of a deal as Scott Brown being able to win as a Republican in Massachusetts.
A: Yeah. I think there’s a thread to that ... Ossoff is not part of the political establishment ... he’s 30 years old, he sort of shows up and he decides he’s going to run for Congress and he captures sort of people’s excitement on the D side. And it was clear too on the Republican side. I don’t know any of these people really well, but the nominee from the Republicans has lost several races before in Republican primaries. And it’s clear that there wasn’t any excitement on the Republican side. There’s nobody who really captured anywhere near a third of the Republican vote and Newt Gingrich and others endorsed candidates who even did a lot worse than she did.
So I know there’s going to be a lot of focus on this being a referendum on Donald Trump, but my sense is that a lot of these races are local and people are looking at sort of the establishment candidates and aren’t very excited about it, which I think is ultimately a problem for both Republicans and Democrats.