Republicans won a vitally important victory on Tuesday night in the Georgia 6th Congressional district. Karen Handel, a solid Republican who stands with conservative values down the line, defeated Jon Ossoff, a 31-year-old itinerant filmmaker, by five points. Ossoff had been expected to run neck-and-neck with Handel; the margin of victory was far broader for Handel than most pollsters expected.
The media, which had declared the race a referendum on President Trump from the outset while hoping for a Handel loss, immediately began downplaying Ossoff’s defeat, despite Democratic donors dumping well over $30 million into the race. And Trump rightly declared the race a victory for his administration — which it is, since the national media would have pilloried him as a political poison for Republicans if Handel had lost.
So, what happened?
1. Ossoff’s Chances Were Inflated From The Outset. Here’s the reality: Republicans dominate this district. Tom Price, who moved to the Trump administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services, routinely won the district by a 20-point margin. Democrats were excited about the district because while Mitt Romney won it by 23 points, Trump won it by just one percentage point. But that’s ignoring the fact that the GA-6 likes Republicans more than it likes Trump. Democrats couldn’t turn Republican voters to Democrats just by bashing Trump — Republicans had already made that call in 2016, and barely went for Trump anyway. Remember, the same district in which Trump eked out a one-point victory went for Price by 23% in the same year. This was a Congressional election, not a presidential one. And Ossoff was only able to garner close to 50% in the first round because there were one million Republicans running who split the vote, and nobody showed up to vote anyway.
2. Democrats Nationalized The Race With Outside Money. Democrats made the crucial mistake of nationalizing the GA-6 with outside cash. This led Republicans in the district to react negatively — instead of staying home, which Democrats desperately needed them to do, they got offended and voted in large numbers. Ossoff received more money from California than Georgia. Voters took it as an insult, and acted accordingly.
3. Hollywood Got Involved. To add injury to insult, Hollywood then decided to get involved. The GA-6 may be an upscale, suburban district, but voters there still aren’t interested in Alyssa Milano’s take on politics. In the same way that Hillary was so flattered by Hollywood attention that she turned the Democratic National Convention into a star-studded rerun of the Emmys, Ossoff took all the support he could find from outsiders who stand in front of a camera all day. Again, this offended the local voters, who felt (rightly) that they were being treated as rubes by the glitz and glamour crowd.
4. Democrats Insisted On Making Trump The National Focus. This was perhaps the biggest mistake of all. Ossoff didn’t talk about Trump during the race. Handel didn’t talk about Trump during the race. Trump isn’t popular in GA-6. But the media talked incessantly about Trump. That’s because they hoped to gin up Democratic enthusiasm for giving and turning out — which they successfully did. But they did something else, too: they insulted the voters in GA-6, many of whom voted for Trump reluctantly to stop Hillary Clinton. Those voters felt that every time they received a mailer about Trump from an outside group, or watched TV and saw their district being pressured to disown Trump, that they were being castigated for their 2016 vote. Furthermore, the focus on Trump from the media hasn’t been on his bad policies — that might convince some swing voters — but on character attacks and Russian rumormongering. Insulting voters isn’t a smart way of winning them over.
5. Democrats Still Have The Albatross Of Nancy Pelosi. Republicans hammered at the relationship between Ossoff and Nancy Pelosi, who is still the most unpopular politician in America (29% favorable). Democrats may be enamored of a San Francisco nut job running the House for themselves, but voters in Georgia aren’t.
6. Ossoff Didn’t Live In The District. Combined with the outside money, the focus on Pelosi, the Hollywood involvement, and the nationalized focus on Trump, Ossoff not living in the district hurt him. He seemed like a carpetbagger emissary from San Francisco to enough voters to lose him the district.
What does all of this mean for 2018? It means that Trump’s toxicity may not be enough to swing red districts that went for him narrowly but went Republican in Congressional races broadly. But that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t compete in 2018. The South Carolina 5th District, which Republicans won last night in a special election by just three points, went by 21 points to Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s new Office of Management and Budget director — and it went for Trump by 18 points. Because there was no national attention on that race and Democrats were energized, the race was close. Which suggests that the Democrats would be better off keeping their key races out of the press and running under the radar in order to prevent Republican backlash and attention if they want to win.
But make no mistake: the GA-6 was a victory for Trump. When the stakes get high, Republicans aren’t willing to abandon their Republicanism just because they may not be enamored of Trump. The choice isn’t Trump-Hillary anymore, but it’s still Republican vs. Pelosi. And that’s what counts.