Democrats Pull Off Surprise Upset In Special Election

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Democrats pulled off a surprising upset on Tuesday evening by flipping a Georgia state House district that has historically leaned Republican.

Democrat Eric Gisler defeated Republican Mack Guest IV in the special election in Georgia’s House District 121.

President Trump won the district last year by 12 points.

Georgia Recorder shared further:

Eric Gisler, a tech executive and small business owner, took the lead in the Athens-area district with 50.85% of the vote, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s office. Republican candidate Mack “Dutch” Guest IV was nearly 200 votes behind, with 49.15% of the vote.

And in metro Atlanta, two candidates vying for an open House seat are headed to a runoff after no one managed to clear the 50% threshold required to win a seat outright in the six-way contest. Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders advanced to a Jan. 6 runoff.

The two races are the latest in a series of off-year special elections for state legislative seats in Georgia to replace lawmakers who have died, resigned, or been appointed to other political offices.

In addition to the Georgia upset, Democrats celebrated a victory in Florida by winning the Miami mayor’s office for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Results Are In For Miami Mayoral Election As Democrats Seek To Win Office For First Time In Nearly Three Decades

“I think we had the right message for the time,” Gisler said in an interview, according to ABC News.

“A lot of what I would call traditional conservatives held their nose and voted Republican last year on the promise of low prices and whatever else they were selling,” he continued.

ABC News has more:

Republicans remain firmly in control of the Georgia House, but their majority is likely fall to 99-81 when lawmakers return in January. Also Tuesday, voters in a second, heavily Republican district in Atlanta’s northwest suburbs sent Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders to a Jan. 6 runoff to fill a vacancy created when Rep. Mandi Ballinger died.

The GOP majority is down from 119 Republicans in 2015. It would be the first time the GOP holds fewer than 100 seats in the lower chamber since 2005, when they won control for the first time since Reconstruction.

The race between Gisler and Guest in House District 121 in the Athens area northeast of Atlanta was held to replace Republican Marcus Wiedower, who was in the seat since 2018 but resigned in the middle of this term to focus on business interests.

Most of the district is in Oconee County, a Republican suburb of Athens, reaching into heavily Democratic Athens-Clarke County.



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