2017 Georgia's 6th congressional district special election

Based on Wikipedia: 2017 Georgia's 6th congressional district special election

The Most Expensive House Race in American History

Fifty-five million dollars. That's what it cost to fill a single seat in the United States House of Representatives in the summer of 2017. To put that in perspective, you could buy a professional sports franchise for that amount. You could fund a small country's military budget. Instead, that money was spent on a suburban Atlanta congressional district that most Americans had never heard of—until it became the most watched political contest in the nation.

The 2017 special election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District wasn't supposed to matter this much. Special elections rarely do. They're usually quiet affairs, held when a sitting representative dies, resigns, or takes a new job, and the replacement is typically a foregone conclusion. But this race was different. This race became a referendum on the nascent Trump presidency, a testing ground for Democratic resistance, and a preview of the political warfare that would define American elections for years to come.

How a Cabinet Appointment Created a Political Earthquake

The seat came open because Tom Price, a Republican congressman who had represented the district since 2005, was tapped by President Donald Trump to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services. When Price was confirmed in February 2017, barely a month into Trump's term, it triggered a special election that would consume the political world.

Under Georgia law, the governor must call a special election at least thirty days after a vacancy occurs. Governor Nathan Deal set the election for April 18, 2017, with a brief three-day window in mid-February for candidates to file their paperwork. The rules were straightforward but unusual: all candidates from all parties would appear on a single ballot—what's known as a jungle primary or blanket primary. If anyone managed to win more than fifty percent of the vote outright, they'd take the seat. If not, the top two finishers would advance to a runoff election.

This format created a fascinating dynamic. It meant that eighteen candidates—eleven Republicans, five Democrats, and two independents—would all be competing simultaneously on the same ballot.

Jon Ossoff: The Thirty-Year-Old Who Raised Millions

Among the Democratic candidates, one name quickly rose above the rest: Jon Ossoff. At just thirty years old, Ossoff was a documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide with no elected experience. He had worked for Congressman Hank Johnson as a national security staffer, and he ran a company that produced investigations for international news organizations. He was young, telegenic, and articulate—precisely the kind of candidate who might appeal to the educated, affluent suburbs that made up the 6th District.

What made Ossoff remarkable wasn't his résumé. It was his fundraising.

Small-dollar donations poured in from across the country. Liberals who were still reeling from Trump's unexpected victory saw the Georgia special election as their first real chance to push back. They gave five dollars, ten dollars, twenty-five dollars—contributions so small they didn't even require disclosure of the donor's name. By the time the campaign ended, Ossoff had raised more than twenty-three million dollars, two-thirds of it from these small donations. It was a record-shattering sum for a House race, a testament to how nationalized American politics had become.

His opponents—particularly Republican Karen Handel—attacked him relentlessly for this out-of-state money. They painted him as a puppet of coastal liberals, someone who didn't represent the district's values. What they didn't mention as loudly was that Handel's own campaign relied heavily on super PACs and outside groups, including organizations funded by anonymous donors—what campaign finance watchdogs call "dark money."

The Republican Field: A Crowded Stage

While Democrats largely consolidated behind Ossoff, Republicans had a messier situation. Eleven candidates split the Republican vote, including several with significant name recognition and political experience.

Karen Handel stood out among them. She had served as Georgia's Secretary of State and had run twice before for major office—for governor in 2010 and for United States Senate in 2014. She had lost both times, but she had built a network of supporters and name recognition that proved valuable in a crowded field.

Other Republican candidates included Bob Gray, a businessman and city councilman from Johns Creek; Judson Hill and Dan Moody, both former state senators; and Bruce LeVell, a businessman who had served on Donald Trump's campaign. There was even Amy Kremer, a tea party activist who had helped found the Tea Party Express movement that had reshaped Republican politics earlier in the decade.

This fragmentation was both a problem and an opportunity. It meant that no single Republican could consolidate support in the first round, but it also meant that Republican voters, collectively, might still outnumber Democrats even if their votes were scattered across many candidates.

Why This District Mattered

Georgia's 6th Congressional District stretches across the northern suburbs of Atlanta, encompassing affluent communities like Sandy Springs, Roswell, and Johns Creek. It's a district of corporate headquarters, good schools, and well-manicured lawns. For decades, it had been reliably Republican—not because of working-class populism, but because of country-club conservatism. These were voters who liked low taxes, free trade, and restrained rhetoric.

Newt Gingrich, the Republican firebrand who became Speaker of the House in the 1990s, had represented the district for two decades. Tom Price had won reelection comfortably time after time. In 2016, Price ran essentially unopposed and won with more than sixty percent of the vote.

But something strange happened in that same 2016 election.

Donald Trump, despite winning Georgia overall, barely carried the 6th District. His margin was just over one percentage point—a stunning underperformance in a district that usually gave Republicans landslide victories. The college-educated suburban voters who made up the district's backbone were not entirely comfortable with Trump's style. They voted for him, but barely, and with visible reluctance.

Democrats saw this as an opportunity. If Trump was this unpopular in the suburbs just months into his presidency, maybe—just maybe—they could flip a district that had been Republican since the early 1990s.

The April Primary: A Near-Miss

On April 18, 2017, voters went to the polls, and Jon Ossoff nearly ended the race that night.

He received 48.1 percent of the vote. That's a staggering performance when you consider that there were seventeen other candidates on the ballot. Karen Handel, the top Republican, finished with just 19.8 percent. The remaining Republican candidates split the rest of the vote among themselves.

But 48.1 percent wasn't fifty percent. Ossoff had come tantalizingly close to an outright victory, but he had fallen short. He and Handel would now face each other in a head-to-head runoff on June 20.

Here's what made the math so challenging for Ossoff: when you added up all the Republican votes from the first round, they totaled 51.2 percent. The Democratic vote—overwhelmingly cast for Ossoff—was just under 49 percent. Ossoff had won nearly every Democratic vote available, while Republicans had scattered their support across eleven candidates. But in a two-person race, those Republican voters would consolidate.

Ossoff had dominated the first round, but he had already captured almost all of his potential supporters. Handel had room to grow.

The Most Expensive Two Months in Congressional History

The runoff campaign was unlike anything American politics had seen for a House race. Television stations in the Atlanta market were flooded with advertising. Forty million dollars—more than seventy percent of all spending—went to television and radio ads alone. Residents of the district couldn't watch the local news, stream a video, or listen to the radio without being bombarded by campaign messages.

National political figures descended on the district. Donald Trump recorded robocalls for Handel. Nancy Pelosi became a central figure in Republican advertising—not because she had anything to do with the race, but because she was unpopular with Republican voters, and tying Ossoff to her was an effective attack strategy. Over and over, Republican ads asked whether voters wanted to elect someone who might support Pelosi for Speaker of the House. Ossoff, notably, declined to say whether he would vote for her.

The intensity of the campaign drove massive early voting. More than 140,000 people cast ballots during the early voting period—an extraordinary number for a special election runoff. Both campaigns claimed the early vote numbers favored them. Both campaigns were partially right and partially wrong.

Election Night: A Democratic Heartbreak

On June 20, 2017, Karen Handel defeated Jon Ossoff by a margin of 51.87 percent to 48.13 percent.

It was closer than any Democrat had come in this district since it had assumed its current suburban form in 1992. In the previous quarter-century, Democratic challengers had only twice even managed to crack forty percent of the vote. Ossoff's 48 percent would have been cause for celebration in almost any other context.

But context matters. Democrats had poured unprecedented resources into this race. National attention had focused on it as a referendum on Trump. Liberal donors across the country had invested their hopes—and their dollars—in Ossoff's campaign. And he had lost.

The New York Times called the result "demoralizing for Democrats." It was hard to argue with that assessment. If Democrats couldn't win a district where Trump had barely scraped by, where educated suburban voters were supposed to be their natural allies, where could they win?

The Sequel: What Happened Next

But the story didn't end on that June night. Politics, like all human endeavors, unfolds over time, and what seemed like a definitive defeat would look very different with the benefit of hindsight.

Karen Handel served in Congress for just one term. In November 2018, she lost her reelection bid to Lucy McBath, a Democratic gun control advocate whose son had been murdered in a shooting. McBath became the first Democrat to represent the 6th District in its modern configuration. The suburban shift that Ossoff's race had hinted at became reality just eighteen months later.

And Ossoff himself? He didn't disappear from politics. In 2020, he ran for the United States Senate against Republican incumbent David Perdue. Neither candidate won a majority in November, forcing yet another Georgia runoff—this time in January 2021. Ossoff won that runoff, becoming one of Georgia's two senators and helping to flip control of the Senate to Democrats.

The thirty-year-old who had come up short in 2017 was now Senator Jon Ossoff. The race that had seemed like a demoralizing defeat was, in retrospect, a dress rehearsal for Democratic success in Georgia.

What the Race Revealed

The 2017 Georgia special election revealed something important about American politics: the suburbs were shifting. For decades, suburban voters—particularly college-educated white voters—had been the backbone of the Republican coalition. They voted for Republican candidates out of economic self-interest and cultural affinity. They liked lower taxes and smaller government. They didn't always love the culture-war rhetoric of the religious right, but they tolerated it.

Donald Trump strained that coalition. His style—combative, unpredictable, often crude—made many suburban voters uncomfortable. They might agree with Republican policies, but they didn't want to be associated with Trump's persona. The 2017 special election was one of the first indicators that this discomfort could translate into actual votes for Democrats.

The race also showed how nationalized American politics had become. A congressional district election in suburban Atlanta attracted fifty-five million dollars and constant national media coverage. Donors from California and New York poured money into Ossoff's campaign. The race wasn't really about local issues or constituent services—it was about sending a message about Trump and the direction of the country.

This nationalization has only accelerated since 2017. Today, almost every competitive congressional race attracts significant national attention and out-of-state money. Local factors matter less; national partisan identity matters more. The Georgia special election was an early and dramatic example of this trend.

The Money Question

Fifty-five million dollars for a single House seat. Is that too much? The question almost answers itself, but it's worth considering what that money bought.

Most of it went to television advertising—forty million dollars' worth. That's countless thirty-second spots, each one trying to persuade or motivate a relatively small number of swing voters. Studies of political advertising suggest that its effects are modest and short-lived. Voters forget ads quickly. The millions spent in early June had probably faded from memory by election day in late June.

Some of the money went to organizing: door-knocking, phone-banking, get-out-the-vote operations. This spending is generally more effective than advertising, but it's also more labor-intensive and harder to scale. You can only knock on so many doors.

The sheer scale of spending reflected the stakes both parties perceived. Democrats saw a chance to embarrass Trump and energize their base. Republicans saw a must-win race to prevent a narrative of Trump-era collapse. Both sides were willing to spend whatever it took.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: after all that money was spent, the outcome may have been determined by factors that had nothing to do with campaign spending. The district's underlying partisan lean—slightly Republican—probably mattered more than any advertisement. Karen Handel's name recognition from previous campaigns mattered. The historical pattern of special elections favoring the party that holds the White House's opposition mattered.

The fifty-five million dollars may have been largely wasted. But neither party could afford to take that risk, so both spent lavishly. It's a prisoner's dilemma: if your opponent is spending millions, you have to spend millions too, even if the spending is mutually wasteful.

A Preview of Things to Come

Looking back from 2025, the 2017 Georgia special election was a preview of nearly everything that would define American politics over the following years. The suburban realignment continued: districts that had once been reliably Republican shifted toward Democrats as college-educated voters—particularly women—moved away from Trump's party. Georgia itself became a genuine swing state, with Joe Biden winning it in 2020 and both Senate seats flipping to Democrats in 2021.

The nationalization of elections intensified. Every competitive race now attracts the kind of attention and spending that once seemed extraordinary. Candidates like Ossoff—young, media-savvy, able to raise small-dollar donations nationally—became the template for Democratic campaigns. The Republican counter-strategy of tying every Democratic candidate to Nancy Pelosi became a standard playbook, replicated in districts across the country.

And the fundamental question the race posed—whether Trump's unpopularity in the suburbs would cost Republicans elections—was answered definitively in 2018, when Democrats flipped forty House seats and took control of the chamber. Karen Handel was one of the Republicans who lost her seat that year.

The Georgia 6th special election didn't change history on its own. Jon Ossoff lost, after all. But it was a tremor before the earthquake, a warning sign that the political landscape was shifting beneath Republicans' feet. Those who paid attention saw what was coming. Those who didn't were surprised when the wave hit.