Ga. U.S. House seat still in limbo

Editor’s note: At presstime, 54 percent of precincts had reported results in the race for Georgia’s Congressional District 6. For the latest information go to www.timesfreepress.com.

DUNWOODY, Ga. — An upstart Democrat led a special election in a conservative Georgia congressional district, but incomplete returns showed him barely clinging to the majority required to pull off a shocking upset in the Atlanta suburbs.

Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional staffer, sought to parlay opposition to President Donald Trump into a victory that would rebuke the White

House and embolden Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

With early voting totals and about half of precincts counted, Ossoff hovered right at the majority threshold required to win an 18-candidate primary outright in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. But tens of thousands of votes remained uncounted, and Ossoff’s lead had been shrinking as more precincts rolled in across a district held by a Republican since Newt Gingrich was elected here in 1978.

The trends pointed increasingly toward a June 20 runoff that would pit Ossoff against the top Republican vote-getter. Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel was a distant second behind Ossoff but had a comfortable lead over other Republican candidates.

Republicans nationally and in Georgia acknowledged before polls opened that Ossoff would top the slate of Republicans, Democrats and independents who appeared together on one primary ballot. The question was whether Ossoff could win outright.

The winner will succeed Tom Price, who resigned to become Trump’s health secretary.

Trump took to Twitter urging Republicans to cast ballots late Tuesday. He even mocked Ossoff’s choice of residence — outside the district.

“Just learned that Jon Ossoff, who is running for Congress in Georgia, doesn’t even live in the district. Republicans, get out and vote!” the president wrote.

The contest is tested both parties’ strategies for the upcoming national election cycle. National attention, already significant, intensified after last week’s

closer-than-expected GOP victory in a Kansas special House election.

Trump did not perform as well as other Republicans last November in the Georgia district, an affluent, well-educated swath filled with the kind of voters Democrats need if they hope to reclaim a House majority next year.

Republicans currently hold a 238-193 advantage in the chamber.

Ossoff would be a “disaster” in Congress, Trump declared earlier Tuesday on social media, a day after he blasted Ossoff as a “super liberal.”

Despite Trump’s Twitter barrage, the White House insisted the race isn’t about the president. “I wouldn’t use the word referendum,” said spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “I think he hopes to have a Republican elected.”

An investigative filmmaker, Ossoff raised more than $8.3 million, mostly from donors far from the northern suburbs of Atlanta. That sum dwarfs what any Republican candidate has spent on the contest.

Ossoff energized liberals and younger voters, while also aiming for disaffected independents and moderate Republicans.

Cedrick Gulley, a 25-year-old Georgia State University student from the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, said Tuesday that Democrats were “a little lazy” in November, but now “there’s an emergence of people fighting.”

Ossoff has pledged to fight Trump when he “embarrasses” the country.