In Tuesday’s closely-watched special election to fill Georgia’s 6th District U.S. House seat, the outsider Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff stunned Republicans by winning nearly 50 percent of the vote, sending him to a June runoff election against GOP frontrunner Karen Handel.
“There is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages,” Ossoff said after the results came in. “We have defied the odds, we have shattered expectations, so bring it on.”
“Jon Ossoff’s first-place finish in ruby-red Georgia shows the huge opportunities for progressive candidates across the country.”
—Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee
With the field split between 18 candidates, Ossoff captured 48.3 percent of the vote with 88 precincts reporting, according to the Guardian. Handel finished a distant second.
While Ossoff had hoped to avert a runoff, his decisive first-place finish in the right-wing district—the seat was previously held by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price—was hailed as a victory by progressives nationwide, and a sign of the strength of the Democratic challenges to come during the 2018 midterms. The election has long been considered a bellwether of the popular resistance to President Donald Trump.
“Jon Ossoff’s first-place finish in ruby-red Georgia shows the huge opportunities for progressive candidates across the country—from Tom Perriello for Governor in Virginia to Rob Quist for Congress in Montana,” commented Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) co-founder, in a statement. “Ossoff showed what’s possible when a campaign taps into the huge grassroots energy of the Resistance.”
Click Here: cd universidad catolica
“Tonight’s powerful result will build momentum toward electing progressive candidates across the country,” said Friends of the Earth Action’s senior political strategist Ben Schreiber in a statement. “We hope tonight’s landslide will encourage the Democratic Party to support progressive candidates that are capable of defeating Trump and his enablers.”
The advocacy group the Latino Victory Fund added: “With 18 candidates splitting the vote in a historically ruby red district, Ossoff’s strong first place finish is a big win and testament to the hard work the resistencia invested in this race. It’s clear that he’ll be a strong competitor in the runoff, and we are confident that his positions on the issues that matter most to our community will help him win in June.”
As Ossoff and his supporters now focus attention on the June runoff vote, observers note that Handel comes with baggage that could help channel resistance efforts against her campaign. As Vice President of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer research organization, Handel in 2012 pushed for the group’s controversial (and since reversed) decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT