$50 million and counting

If you followed the Georgia’s 6th congressional district runoff election, where Karen Handel and Jon Ossoff battled it out to replace Tom Price, it was a very close race.

You’ll also have heard that it was an “expensive” race. Between the two, over $50 million was spent!

FYI, Tom Price was promoted to cabinet member by President Trump,  so the heavily gerrymandered Republican seat became open.

In the special election there were 18 candidates, and Ossoff almost won by getting 48% of the about 194,000 votes cast. That’s approximately 44% of the registered voters in the district.

Not surprisingly, after the huge amount of money was spent, there were actually 58% (up from 44%) of the registered voters who voted this time. Even the registered voter count increased by 2,731 people, such was the interest.

Most voted before election day (54%) using postal mail or visiting an early voting location. As this was a runoff, this was  actually a very good turnout as runoffs are dull and most people don’t bother to vote in those elections.

That means the winners of runoffs are usually elected by a very small group of interested citizens, and most of the voting public don’t count… as they don’t vote.

Although Karen Handel won by a four point margin in the heavily Republican district, don’t count Ossoff out. He’s a young man, has a huge amount of money left in his campaign bank account (that he can keep there forever) and will use that to almost certainly run in a gerrymandered Democratic district, and not the 6th again.

He’ll also win. Why?

Because he’s very well known now, and has lot’s of donated money to spend.

I suspect that he will ultimately decide to stay in the district where he is living now rather than moving back to the Republican 6th congressional district where he ran as it will be an uphill battle there. It’s easier to run downhill than uphill.

Maybe his girlfriend (fiance?) will “ask him to stay in district where they live” and he will at “her request.”

The truth is that he has very little chance of winning in the 6th so he’ll be better off staying where he is or move to another Democratic Party controlled district.

That’s the key to being elected to and staying in Congress forever. Being known and having lot’s of money to spend.

The hugely expensive runoff could have been avoided using Cascading Voting, where in every election there is a winner. How? Read this.