The special election in Georgia's 6th district is being held tomorrow, and as usual, pundits,particularly on the Left are making it a huge deal..a 'referendum on Trump.' It isn't, no matter who wins.
The election is being held because Republican Tom Price resigned his seat in order to become Secretary of Health and Human Services. While Price is quite conservative and won his district by over 20 points, the district itself isn't, and Price's long incumbency is due a lot more to his general character and attention to the needs of his constituents in his district. In reality, Georgia 6 is sort of a middle of the road district for the most part, one Trump won by only 1.5%.
The two candidates are Jon Ossoff, who ran unopposed as a Democrat and Karen Handel who finished on top of a field of 14 Republicans and took just enough of the votes to force a runoff. Combined, the Republican votes totaled more than Ossof's tally.
Ossoff's entire background is as a political operative. He's never done much else. He was and remains the beneficiary of huge amounts of cash,$27 million or so, almost all of it from blue strongholds like California and New York. The huge influx of out of state cash actually might hurt him, since he doesn't live in the district and has already been tagged with the label 'carpetbagger.' That still means something in this part of the country.
Another interesting factoid is that the nature of his campaign changed. Originally, he ran as 'someone who's going to make Donald Trump furious' and concentrated on attacking President Trump and his policies. Reportedly, his internals including a 'focus group' run by the DCCC discovered that wasn't playing all that well. So he stopped attacking the president in his ads and began running more of a Bernie Sanders lite, reform Washington, eat the rich,class warfare type campaign.
At the same time, Republican Karen Handel, Georgia's former secretary of State has run her campaign along the lines of tax reform and more centrist GOP lines, taking care not to ally herself too closely with the Trump presidency.
Both these factoids are evidence that the Left's frenzy over Georgia 6 being a referendum on the Trump administration are sheer nonsense. Ditto for any opinions on the Right that a victory means a major endorsement of the president. And the fact that this is likely going to be a tight race underlines the idea that this race being any kind of sign of trends in the future are ridiculous.
A prediction? The polls are pretty evenly divided some showing Karen Handel ahead and some showing Ossof ahead. All of them are within the margin of error, although Handel seems to be showing a very slight amount of momentum.
But here's a prediction I feel perfectly OK making. If Ossof manages to eke out a win, the Democrats and their media will celebrate it as if the Messiah had arrived. If he loses, they will spin like tops telling everyone how unimportant it is.
I know this because this is exactly how they behaved in the Kansas and Montana special elections, both of which they were confident of winning and were viewing as 'resistance' against Trump. Remember when they lost, and lost handily? Suddenly neither of these races were deemed important anymore. Move along, nothing to see here...
There's a prediction you can take to the bank.
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