Tom Price’s former House seat remains in Republican hands
WASHINGTON- Former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel (R) narrowly defeated millennial Democrat Jon Ossoff in Tuesday’s contest to occupy the suburban Atlanta congressional seat vacated by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.
The final tally showed Handel had garnered 51.9 percent of the vote compared with Ossoff’s 48.1 percent.
Recent polls gave Ossoff a slight lead over Handel and many political pundits had suggested that the 30-year-old Democrat might benefit from President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings as well as demographic changes within the district.
Georgia’s 6th district used to be a considered a shoe-in for Republicans but has more recently become contestable.
President Donald Trump carried the district by less than 2 percentage points. Four years earlier Mitt Romney won the district by 23 points.
Many Democrats considered the race to be a bell-weather contest that might foreshadow how the party will fare in the 2018 mid-term elections. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee contributed about $5 million to Ossoff’s campaign.
Ossoff’s defeat means Democrats have failed to pickup the four Congressional seats vacated by Trump cabinet/cabinet-level appointees.
Price represented Georgia’s 6th district for more than 12 years before vacating the seat in February.
This article is republished with permission from Talk Media News
Bryan is an award-winning political journalist who has extensive experience covering Congress and Maryland state government.
His work includes coverage of the election of Donald Trump, the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions-as well as that of the Maryland General Assembly, Gov. Larry Hogan, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bryan has broken stories involving athletic and sexual assault scandals with the Baltimore Post-Examiner.
His original UMBC investigation gained international attention, was featured in People Magazine and he was interviewed by ABC’s “Good Morning America” and local radio stations. Bryan broke subsequent stories documenting UMBC’s omission of a sexual assault on their daily crime log and a federal investigation related to the university’s handling of an alleged sexual assault.