Republicans in Atlanta’s northern suburbs can sleep just a little bit easier after GOP candidate Greg Gianforte avoided electoral disaster here Thursday evening.
But the former technology executive’s single-digit victory in this vast state of only 1 million people - which backed Donald Trump for president by more than 20 percentage points in November - has Democrats enthusiastic that the tide will turn their way in Georgia’s 6th District runoff on June 20.
Gianforte faced a tougher-than-expected challenge from Democratic folk singer Rob Quist and, in a bizarre twist less than 24 hours before voters hit the polls, a misdemeanor assault citation for tangling with a reporter.
Despite that, he won the race for Montana's at-large House seat. With all precincts reporting, Gianforte notched 50 percent of the vote, 6 percentage points more than Quist. A Libertarian candidate came in third, with six percent of the vote.
The result in this nationally-watched contest pokes some holes in Democrats' argument that President Donald Trump's unpopularity and the GOP's politically-fraught effort to replace Obamacare will flip even the most Republican corners of the country.
Gianforte’s win also hands the GOP some hard-won momentum heading into the final weeks of campaigning roughly 2,000 miles away in Georgia’s 6th District.
Read more: Montanans facing same onslaught as Georgia’s 6th District voters
Gianforte's victory, paired with Republican John Estes' similar win in Kansas last month, staves off any sort of imminent GOP identity crisis in the lead up to the 2018 midterm elections, at least for now.
But Gianforte and Estes’ relatively narrow victories still have many Republicans anxious about what’s around the corner in next month’s head-to-head battle between Republican Karen Handel an Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia.
If Gianforte and Estes pulled off only single-digit victories in places Trump carried by double digits just six months ago, they wonder, what will happen in Georgia’s 6th District, where Trump edged out Hillary Clinton by less than 2 percentage points?
“Karen Handel is running a good campaign, but it’s what she has no control over that’s hurting her,” said GOP operative Chip Lake.
Unlike the Kansas and Montana contests, Lake said, “the results of the presidential election in (Georgia’s 6th District) were not as favorable for Trump and therefore Karen Handel doesn’t have the luxury that these other candidates had to survive a national drag on the ticket.”
Georgia Democrats say they see Gianforte’s relatively narrow margin of victory — his GOP predecessor defeated Democratic opponents here by about 15 percentage points in 2014 and 2016 — as an opening for Ossoff.
“If the movement against Trump is consistent (following the races in Kansas and Montana), then you should put Georgia in blue by those numbers,” said Stefan Turkheimer, a Democratic operative.
Not only is the national mood swinging in their favor, Democrats argue, but their party apparatus has invested heavily in Georgia. The party was barely involved in the Montana race, and they were outspent by outside Republican groups several times over.
Charles Bullock, a professor who specializes in Southern politics at the University of Georgia, said the Montana results “raise the ante” for Democrats in the 6th District race.
“They may be able to rationalize the two earlier defeats, claiming that those were rural districts and the GOP does much better in rural than urban America,” he said. But “if they cannot win an open district that only narrowly backed Trump despite spending tens of millions of dollars and a steady drumbeat of negative news about the new administration, what prospects do they have for winning the seats needed to take control of the House in 2018?”
Complicating aspects
Both races featured Republicans who were seen as the favorites and had previously run for statewide office, as well as Democrats with fundraising prowess who were new to politics. And many of the same outside groups that have been active in Georgia, including the Paul Ryan-aligned super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, and the liberal fundraising website the Daily Kos, were also players in the Montana race.
But there are some factors that muddy some of Montana’s would-be lessons for Georgia, starting with Gianforte’s alleged physical altercation with a reporter here in Bozeman on Wednesday.
After initially denying the journalist's account of the incident, Gianforte apologized, but only after he was declared the winner. What's unclear is what, if any, impact the incident had. Thousands had already voted early.
Multiple Gianforte supporters assembled at the Republican’s watch party on Thursday cautioned that the GOP should not get complacent in places such as Georgia after their Montana victory. They said Gianforte’s victory was a reflection of the candidates and state politics and less a commentary on Trump.
While the Georgia contest has become what is essentially a nationalized battle over the policy being made in Washington, the Montana race often looked inward, despite Gianforte framing himself as a Trump accolyte.
Big issues were the management of national resources and public lands, as well as the question of whether to institute a sales tax in the state.
Like in the Atlanta contest, health care and the personal finances of both candidates were also hot topics.
Georgia GOP operative Brian Robinson said that unlike the Republican candidates in Kansas and Montana, Handel will not be able to rely solely on Trump voters in order to win the 6th District. Much like Ossoff, he said, she’ll need to focus on winning over independents.
“Handel has to keep her eye on keeping together the coalition in the 6th District that gave wide margins to (former U.S. Rep. Tom) Price, (U.S. Sen. Johnny) Isakson, (Gov. Nathan) Deal and (U.S. Sen. David) Perdue,” Robinson said.
Georgia Democrats also sounded notes of caution about reading too much into the Montana results.
The makeup of the districts are as different as can be, they warned.
With portions of DeKalb, Cobb and Fulton Counties, Georgia’s 6th District is dense, suburban and educated. Montana’s is heavily rural, the voters more scattered, and blue collar. The state has a history of electing populist, independent candidates, and ballot-splitting is popular. Georgia, on the other hand, has not elected a Democratic official to statewide office in years.
“There’s a very different base, very different candidates,” said Liz Flowers, a top aide to Georgia Senate Democrats.
“The guy in Montana was a banjo player. Jon Ossoff is not a banjo player,” she added.
MONTANA RESULTS
Greg Gianforte (R) 189,473 (50.2%)
Rob Quist (D) 166,483 (44.1%)
Mark Wicks (L) 21,509 (5.7%)
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