GOP relief
Handel wins in Georgia, thanks Trump
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.
Returns showed Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, winning about 52 percent of the vote over Democrat Jon Ossoff, who won nearly 48 percent in Georgia’s 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 Handel’s 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.
Handel’s margin allows Republicans a sigh of relief after what’s 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. Georgia’s 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.
“It’s 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 Trump’s 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 District’s southern border.
In victory, she commended Ossoff and pledged to work for his supporters. She noted last week’s 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.