Ossoff lost Georgia, and I’m not surprised at all

Last Tuesday, Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in the most expensive congressional race in U.S. history. The special election filled the vacancy left by current Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, located just outside of Atlanta. Newt Gingrich took the 6th district in 1979, and it has been held by Republicans comfortably since. However, since President Donald Trump won the district by a close margin of only two percentage points in 2016, Democrats saw an opportunity to try to flip it.  

Handel, Georgia’s former secretary of state and a resident of the district, knew her prospective constituents were not enthused by Trump or his platform. Instead of following the lead of many Republican politicians and echoing Trump’s talking points, she distanced herself from him and ran on a platform that mirrored Republican ideals, not Trump’s.  

Ossoff, a former documentary filmmaker who lives outside of the 6th district, also knew the residents in this district were not energized by Trump. Consequently, he tried to make the election a referendum on Trump. Ossoff shaped his platform around the ideas of the #resist movement, which includes no message other than to oppose Trump. Wealthy Democratic donors in California and New York heard about this attempted Trump referendum and decided to funnel money into the race. In fact, only 14 percent of Ossoff’s $8 million in individual donations came from within the Peach State compared to 56 percent of Handel’s $2.1 million.

Handel, who spent $4.5 million, ended up winning the district by a wider margin than Trump did over Hillary Clinton, earning 134,595 votes (51.9 percent) compared to Ossoff, who spent $23.6 million, earning 124,893 votes (48.1 percent). At a glance, this appears to be a gain for the Democratic Party in a consistently Republican district, but when the previous district election results are considered, this theory is dispelled.  

In the 2016 election, Tom Price earned 201,088 votes, defeating Democratic challenger Rodney Stooksbury, who earned 124,917 votes. Stooksbury is a mystery. He’s impossible to find on the internet. He had no website and did not actively campaign in 2016. He raised a grand total of $0. Yet, this mystery man earned 23 more votes than Ossoff, who spent a congressional election national record of $23.6 million. So $23.6 million actually lost votes for Democrats, showing what a calamity this election really was.  

These counterintuitive results call into question exactly how Ossoff lost with so much more money in an election that was supposed to be a referendum on the least popular president in American history (according to his approval ratings). Unfortunately for Ossoff, the election was not so much a referendum on Trump than it was on an even more unpopular figure: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi, a long-tenured legislator who enjoys immense popularity with the progressives, is despised by much of the rest of the population, including moderate Democrats who see her views as too extreme. Her current position as House minority leader allowed Handel to tie a vote for Ossoff to a vote for Pelosi. While there could have been multiple reasons for Ossoff’s failure, Democrats in the House have started to question whether Pelosi’s unpopularity is to blame. Considering Democrats have lost all five special elections since Trump’s inauguration, the evidence may be stacking up against her. Pelosi has defended herself as a “master legislator” and “astute leader” and declared that “the decision (to step down) isn’t up to (her opponents).” But unless the Democrats win the House majority back in 2018, Pelosi’s fate, no matter how much of a “master legislator” she is, will no longer be in her hands.

 

Jack Story is a UF graduate. His column appears on Tuesdays.