It may not have been a full fledged ‘blue wave,’ but Georgia Democrats have to be pleased today after winning a key Atlanta senate district and a pair of right-leaning Athens-area house seats on Tuesday.
The biggest story of the night was in Hunter Hill’s old Senate District 6, where the GOP was shockingly locked out of the runoff as a pair of Democrats advanced. With a Dem victory already assured, state Republicans will lose their supermajority in the state senate.
Jaha Howard and Jen Jordan will square off in the all blue runoff that nobody expected as the pair took advantage of a split Republican field. Howard dominated Cobb County to a tune of 43% of the vote, while Jordan performed better in Fulton, leading all vote-getters with 25%. That news should bode well for Howard as Cobb is the more liberal of the two halves of the district and should see higher turnout in next month’s runoff where Republicans will have little motivation to turn out to the polls.
A huge disappointment for the GOP, where a trio of Republicans split much of the red vote and kept one single candidate from making the runoff. Matt Bentley performed well in Cobb, while Charlie Loudermilk and Leah Aldridge each had strong showings in Fulton but in the end were unable to advance.
In House District 117, left vacant by Republican Regina Quick, Democrat Deborah Gonzalez scored an upset over young Republican Houston Gaines 53% to 47%. A strong showing from dark blue Clarke County portion of the seat propelled Gonzalez to victory in a district that Donald Trump won by 5 points last November.
Next door in HD 119 Democrat Jonathan Wallace pulled off an upset of his own as three Republicans split their base and allowed the Dem to win the race outright with 56% of the vote. Marcus Wiedower and Tom Lord divided the district’s portion of right-leaning Oconee County with 27% each while Wallace took 37% before dominating Clarke with an impressive 75% of the total. The longtime Republican district was left vacant when Chuck Williams resigned upon being appointed director of the Georgia Forestry Commission in August. Williams hadn’t even drawn opposition since winning his own special election in 2011.
The other legislative races throughout the state lacked such drama.
In Dalton’s HD 4 Republican Kasey Carpenter notched an impressive win with 54% of the vote, while in HD 26 near Lake Lanier fellow Republican Marc Morris will join him in Atlanta this January.
Democrats De’Andre S. Pickett and Kim Schofield will continue to a runoff in HD 60, the dark blue South Atlanta district vacated by Keisha Waites. A similar story played out in HD 89, where Dems Bee Nguyen and Sachin Varghese will continue their dance until December 5th as they battle for the DeKalb County seat. Likewise in Senate District 39 Linda Pritchett and Nikema Williams, both Dems in a left-leaning south Atlanta district, will meet in the runoff.
