Democrat leads Georgia congressional race

DUNWOODY, Ga. — Early, incomplete election returns show a Democrat leading in a conservative Georgia congressional district as he bids for a major upset.

Most polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, and votes were being counted in the metro Atlanta race in which Democrat Jon Ossoff 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.

Republicans nationally and in Georgia conceded before polls opened that Ossoff would lead the 18-candidate field Tuesday. An entire slate — Republicans, Democrats and independents — appeared on one primary ballot in the state’s 6th Congressional District, which encompasses several of Atlanta’s northern suburbs.

The question is whether Ossoff could command a majority to claim the seat outright. If not, he would face the other top vote-getter, likely a Republican, in a June 20 runoff. The winner succeeds Tom Price, who resigned to become Trump’s health secretary.

With nine of 210 precincts reporting, Ossoff had 61 percent of the vote; his closest challengers were Karen Handel, a Republican who had 15 percent, and Dan Moody, also a Republican, who had 9 percent.

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 testing both parties’ strategies for the coming national election cycle. Democrats are expected to have a better shot at snagging the typically Republican seat than they did in last week’s closer-than-expected GOP victory in a Kansas special House election.

Trump did not perform as well as other Republicans in November in the Georgia district, an affluent, well-educated area filled with the kind of voters Democrats are likely to 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 the “super liberal” Democrat as a champion of criminals, higher taxes and unchecked immigration.

Despite Trump’s Twitter barrage, the White House insisted the race isn’t about the president. “I wouldn’t use the word referendum,” said spokesman 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 has energized liberals and younger voters, while also aiming for disaffected independents and moderate Republicans.

Cedrick Gulley, 25, a Georgia State University student from the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, compared the 30-year-old Ossoff to former President Barack Obama and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. Gulley said Tuesday that they all “make me feel like my generation is being heard.”

He added 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. But he’s also said he would “work with anybody in Washington who respects your tax dollars.”

That still wasn’t enough for voters like Matt West, 45, a financial planner from Roswell.

“He lives outside the district, he’s a Democrat, and I just don’t believe that he’d stand up to [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi if the district wanted him to,” West said.

West said he voted for Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state who is an establishment favorite and has led the GOP field.

Republican groups ran a blitz of ads trying to tie Ossoff to Pelosi; a political action committee backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan has spent more than $2 million on those and other attacks.

As for residency, Ossoff concedes that he lives just south of the district, in Atlanta, so his girlfriend is close to her work at Emory University’s medical complex.

Among other top Republicans in the race, technology executive Bob Gray and two former state senators, Moody and Judson Hill, were battling Handel in a fight for the No. 2 spot.

Handel has maintained distance from Trump, rarely discussing him unless asked. Gray has called himself a “willing partner” for the president.

National Republicans say any of the four competitive GOP candidates could defeat Ossoff in a second round. They predicted conservative voters would be energized in a Republican vs. Democrat scenario, making it harder for Ossoff to run above the fray as he had leading up to the primary.

“Republican voters are not going to sit by and let this district go to a Democrat,” Handel said at one of her final campaign stops.

AP/DAVID GOLDMAN A voter casts a ballot Tuesday in Atlanta in a special election to fill the U.S. House seat vacated by Tom Price, who resigned to serve as U.S. health secretary.