Taylor Bennett loses State House race by narrowest of margins

Former Georgia Tech quarterback Taylor Bennett suffered a most agonizing defeat in the race to retain his seat in the Georgia State House. Bennett, a Democrat who won the seat last year in a special election, lost to Republican Meagan Hanson by 315 votes. Hanson won District 80 with 11,551 votes to Bennett’s 11,236.

Hanson won 50.69 percent of the vote in the district, which covers Brookhaven, Chamblee and Sandy Springs in DeKalb and Fulton counties. Essentially, Hanson won 38-37 out of every 75 votes. The district has leaned Republican. Bennett, an attorney, won the seat in 2015 after the previous representative, Mike Jacobs, a Republican who had served six consecutive terms, became a DeKalb State Court judge.

Bennett played for the Yellow Jackets 2005-2007, starting in 2007 before leaving as a graduate transfer for Louisiana Tech upon the hire of coach Paul Johnson.