As Paula and I both lived in Georgia at one time, we followed the recent special election for the vacant House seat in district 6. This of course is the race that received so much national attention as the Democrats foretold that its outcome would have large and significant implications for the Republican party. It was broadcast that a Democrat win would show that voters had turned against President Trump, and would serve as a referendum on his policies. Instead, the race ended up proving something entirely different from what the Democrats predicted, and in a way that was not only unexpected, but hardly covered in the media.
First a bit of context about this race. There are 14 Congressional districts in the state of Georgia and this race determined the Representative for one of those districts – the 6th. The 6th district is home to 6.7% of the population of Georgia, and 0.2% of the US population. The special election in this district occurred because the previous office holder, Tom Price, accepted a Cabinet position in the current Administration which left this Congressional seat vacant.
As there was no incumbent Republican running in this election, the Democrats thought they had a legitimate chance to win the seat. The Democrat candidate was 30-year-old Jon Ossoff who had strong national support from his Party. So strong, that he broke a record for the highest percentage of out-of-state campaign donations (97%) of any Congressional election in history. Additionally, this race achieved the record for the most overall money spent on any Congressional election ($55 Million). Notably, Mr. Ossoff doesn’t even live in the 6th district that he would have represented. He lives close-by, but not among, his would-be constituents.
The election took place last week and the Republican candidate won by a comfortable margin. Yes, the pre-election polling was once again wrong and the result was not as close as hype had it, but that is unfortunately now commonplace. What was so telling about this election result, yet has been virtually ignored by the media, is the actual raw vote count received by Mr. Ossoff. With a record amount of money raised and spent, as well as high-profile support from the Democrat Party, Mr. Ossoff still didn’t get as many total votes as did the Democrat candidate in the 2016 election for this same district.
In the 2016 election for the Georgia 6th district, merely 8 months ago, the Democrat candidate Rodney Stooksbury received 124, 917 votes in his loss to Republican Tom Price. In last weeks very high profile special election for the same seat, Mr. Ossoff received 124,893 votes – 24 votes fewer than Mr. Stooksbury. Why is this significant? As has already been mentioned, Mr. Ossoff made history in 2017 with the abundance and sources of money brought to bear in his campaign. Additionally, he had the full-throated support of his national Party. On the other hand, Mr. Stooksbury spent no money at all in his 2016 campaign (literally $0.00 dollars). He had no website, no social media presence, not even a public photograph. In effect, no advertising at all. To make matters worse, he had zero support from his own Party either locally or nationally. In fact, he was referred to in local papers as the “Ghost Candidate”, with some people wondering if he even existed. Despite all of that, he still garnered more votes than Mr. Ossoff.
What can’t be ignored in contemplating the vote total comparison between the 2016 and 2017 races in this district is the likelihood that the people who voted for Mr. Ossoff neither knew nor cared who he was. Nearly the same exact number of people voted for Mr. Stooksbury only 8 months earlier. There has been no substantive change in the population demographics of the 6th district since the 2016 election. In that 2016 election, voters clearly had no idea who Mr. Stooksbury was. Nobody did. He gave no interviews, no speeches and wrote nothing. The most aggressive investigative reporters couldn’t even find him. Residents where he supposedly lived had never heard of him (feeding the speculation that he may not actually exist). It’s almost comical that he received any votes at all, let alone more than Mr. Ossoff! This means Mr. Ossoff was already destined to receive a “baseline” number of votes no matter what – from people who simply vote Democrat regardless of the candidate. The extraordinary effort expended on the 2017 special election by the Democrat party was obviously intended to add more votes to that existing baseline number, hopefully enough to win. That Ossoff actually lost votes in the effort is a devastating result. We’ve written previously about the recent devolution and demise of the Democrat Party (Party Breakdown). This may well be the final death knell.
News outlets friendly to Democrats, who billed this election to be a crushing referendum on President Trump, tried to rationalize the pitiable result by proclaiming that this Georgia district has been historically Republican and that turn-out is naturally lower in special elections. These claims are nonsense. The Georgia 6th district was established in 1827. For the following 152 years, every single candidate elected to represent the Georgia 6th district in the US House of Representatives was a Democrat. Simple math shows that this district has had a Democrat representative 80% of the time over its entire history¹. This can hardly be called “historically Republican”. Also, while it may be true in the general case that special elections have lower-turn out than their “regular” election counterparts, this special election could not possibly be considered an “average” special election given the record-setting amount of money and media attention it attracted. Lastly, this election result was in no way a referendum on President Trump. As proof, Mr. Stooksbury received his superior number of votes over Mr. Ossoff before those same voters even knew Donald Trump would be President.
The message from this election is unmistakably clear– the Democrat ideology in its present form was flatly rejected, despite a herculean effort of external “meddling” to muscle a candidate into office. No new or additional pool of voters flocked to the Democrat ticket. Big money and media bias are no longer able to overcome a badly-deteriorated ideology. We saw the same result in the Presidential election. The ideology must evolve if the Democrat Party is to survive.
¹ In 1978, the Georgia 6th district saw a smart young Republican candidate who effortlessly articulated a well-reasoned ideology that was simple and easy for the voters to digest. One year later, Newt Gingrich became the first ever Republican elected to represent the Georgia 6th district. Gingrich’s attachment to his ideology was genuine, and plainly evident in his personally-crafted speeches and writings (no outside help necessary). He went on to be re-elected 10 times, and the ideology he espoused has remained the preference of 6th district voters ever since.