Georgia Continues to Lead the Way on the National Stage
According to an article by Politico, Congresswoman Karen Handel (R-Ga.) made a presentation to House GOP leaders behind closed doors on Wednesday morning. The presentation covered how she won a highly contested race against Democrat Jon Ossoff last summer and how incumbents and newbies alike can beat opposition in the upcoming mid-term elections.
“Be prepared for their campaign, execute the fundamentals and make sure they look at the data and analytics of their districts and their voters,” Handel said she told the conference. “The biggest thing is to be prepared.”
Accompanying Handel was NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers (R-Ohio). Stivers message, according to those in the room, was more of the same. He encouraged Republicans to raise money and engage with constituents. And while Republicans held onto 5 seats in special elections this year, historically speaking, Republicans know that a loss of seats in the House is likely.
“Buckle-up,” said one Republican in the room describing Stivers’ message.
However, Republican Leadership believes that Karen Handel’s winning strategy can prove helpful as Republicans campaign during a time when the President who shares their Party has approval ratings that might make the campaign trail more difficult. Congresswoman Handel encouraged members to “raise money, organize an aggressive ground game, and try to highlight results” like the newest tax law.
And while money helps and results make the pitch easier to give, Mrs. Handel hit the nail on the head with “the aggressive ground game. The win that brought Wednesday’s meeting to fruition came at incredible buy in from the State at large. College Republicans, Young Republicans, County Republican Parties, high schoolers, families, and my brother’s girlfriend’s sister’s best friend’s mom’s yoga teacher’s dog walker went door to door, made phone calls, held fundraisers, organized meet and greet’s, and put out signs. Aggressive only skims the surface of the ground game that the Handel campaign was able to organize.
The eyes of the nation are still on Georgia as candidates across the country work towards a Handel-esque win. No need to steal a page, y’all. We like sharing winning recipes.
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Theresa Garcia Robertson
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Perhaps.
But it’s also important to note that Handel’s successful campaign was for an election in which there were only two candidates running. How this all plays in an election with 434 other sets of candidates is another matter.
Her entire presentation could have been summarized by two words. Turnout & Prayer. The GA-06 special election proved that there was ceiling for how well a Democrat can perform in a district that red. Ossoff tallied the highest vote total ever for any Democrat for that district. All of that effort and enthusiasm wasn’t enough to contend with the lowest total of votes a Republican has garnered since 1998. She gets credit for generating sufficient enough enthusiasm for an special election. Though it could be argued that Republican voter opposition to Ossoff was a larger motivator for the higher than expected turnout. Congressional Republicans should be weary of using this election as a guide for races in 2018. GA-06 is not the kind of district that Democrats have a realistic shot at flipping this year. It took a miracle number of occurrences for the special election result to be as close as it was.