Trumpist candidate Bruce LeVell fails to get past 0.2%. Sad!GA-06 is the best educated district held by a Republican congressman in the whole country. They don't like Trump there. But instead of keeping a low profile, Trump was blithely tweeting away this morning and even did an attack ad robo-call, making it clear to everyone that the contest today was a referendum on Trump. Turnout was very high-- over a third of registered voters. Last November, Tom Price coasted to reelection against an unknown and un-financed opponent, Rodney Stooksbury. Even with Hillary nearly beating Trump in the district-- Trump pulled it off 48.3% to 46.8%-- Price won resoundingly: 201,088 (61.7%) to 124,917 (38.3%)-- a 23.2 point margin. As you know, Trump picked Price, a right-wing extremist and a self-serving crook possibly headed for indictment, as his Secretary of Health and Human Services, sparking today's special election.John Ossoff will face ex-Secretary of State Karen Handel in a run-off on June 20th. Tonight's results showed Ossoff way out ahead, as expected, as Republicans split up just over half the votes. These were the top 10 vote-getters out of 18 candidates with all but the bulk of very red Fulton County precincts reporting. We will update when Fulton County works around their technical glitch in the count [UPDATE- Final numbers below]:
• Jon Ossoff (D)- 92,390 (48.1%)• Karen Handel (R)- 37,993 (19.8%)• Bob Gray (R)- 20,755 (10.8%)• Dan Moody (R)- 16,994 (8.8%)• Judson Hill (R)- 16,848 (8.8%)• Kurt Wilson (R)- 1,812 (0.9%)• David Abroms (R)- 1,637 (0.9%)• Ragin Edwards (D)- 502 (0.3%)• Ron Slotin (D)- 488 (0.3%)• Bruce Levell (R)- 455 (0.2%)
For Ossoff to have pulled off an outright win, it was estimated that he would have had to win about 65% of the vote in the bluest of the district's 3 counties, DeKalb. With all 43 precincts reporting. he only managed 59%-- outperforming Hillary slightly but not by enough to prevent a June runoff with Handel. Republicans closed polling places in DeKalb County early. It's how they play the game.The only candidate close to Trump in the race was businessman Bruce LeVell, who never could get beyond that 0.2% mark. But, as ThinkProgress noted Monday, the race included "the first Republican to run in a national election in the Trump era who has publicly denounced the president. David Abroms did not vote for Donald Trump. He tells voters on the campaign trail that he disagrees with the president on policies and that he has no respect for Trump’s character." A Rubio primary voter-- Rubio beat Trump is all 3 counties that make up GA-06-- Abroms said he opposed Trump because of his character flaws and that "he ran on a platform of division and resentment, which I think is damaging to the country. And I don’t think he’s a conservative. I think he’s more of a nationalist than a populist." Asked if he thought running against Trump will be an asset for other politicians, he responded with an answer most Republicans will be too scared too pay attention to, at least for now:
If I had a message for Republicans that are running for reelection or that are considering running, my recommendation would be to run as your own person. Don’t feel like you have to defend Trump… Just because Trump has struck a nerve with a big part of the electorate doesn’t mean that that is going to be transferrable to other Congressional candidates.The Republicans that are doing the best are the ones who are not running as the ones who say they will go to Washington and do whatever Trump wants. The ones who are saying that are doing very poorly. [In this race,] you have Bruce LeVell, who was Trump’s national diversity coalition chair. I don’t even think he’s registering in polls. Amy Kremer, she started the super PAC to support Trump in the primaries. She’s at zero. So the Trump movement has not transferred over to certain candidates. I think that’s very noteworthy and people across the country should pay close attention.
No matter how you look at tonight's results in this very red congressional district, the big loser was Donald J. Trump who even educated Republicans detest. If you want to help flip Congress and shut down Trump's toxic agenda, please consider contributing what you can to Jon Ossoff's runoff battle-- and to the other candidates on the Blue America page you'll find by tapping the ActBlue thermometer below. Remember, Rob Quist's race in Montana culminates May 25.