Politics

‘Ossoff Effect’ Fails To Help Dems Clinch Another Georgia Race

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Phillip Stucky Political Reporter
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Georgia Democrats hopes of expanding on Jon Ossoff’s success in the special election to replace former Rep. Tom Price were dashed after Republican Kay Kirkpatrick easily won the special election for the state legislature Tuesday.

Democrats hoped that their gains in the Georgia 6th congressional district would translate to other local races, but Democratic candidate Christine Triebsch only earned $5,000 in donations and fell well short of winning the runoff election.

Kirkpatrick defeated Triebsch in the runoff election Tuesday, earning 57 percent compared to the democrat’s 43 percent. Turnout was fairly high for such a small race. Twenty percent of eligible voters participated in the small race. Forty-three percent of all registered voters participated in the nationally-known Georgia 6th congressional race, in comparison.

Triebsch attempted to latch on to Ossoff’s strong disapproval for President Donald Trump. She attempted to launch a massive grassroots effort around her opposition to Trump and even announced she would not have run if Trump lost the presidential election in November. Despite using Ossoff’s rhetoric on the campaign trail, she only managed to net $5,000 in donations, and she gave $5,000 in donations to her own campaign. She also fell roughly 4,000 votes short of the win.

“This is a fairly good indicator for Karen Handel that Cobb County’s Republican base is still energized to vote for Republicans,” Republican strategist Brian Robinson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, referring to his party’s congressional candidate who has been locked in a battle with Democrat Jon Ossoff. “As I said to Republican leaders in this state, I wasn’t concerned that Dr. Kirkpatrick wouldn’t win. I was concerned that an overly close showing would really throw gas on the fire for Ossoff. But this wasn’t competitive.”

Ossoff earned $8.3 million in donations for the first quarter of 2017 and earned the majority of the vote in the special election in April. Ossoff went into the special election with a huge lead in early voting ballots due to an extremely well-funded get out the vote operation in the weeks before voting took place.

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