Georgia Republicans are on edge after a Democrat’s Senate campaign has reshaped the state’s political reality and threatened the House majority the party has held for more than 20 years.
The question in Republican circles is no longer only whether Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) will beat Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) in November, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
It is how much damage Collins does to everyone else on the ballot, the newspaper reported. That includes the Georgia House majority the party has controlled since 2005.
Ossoff leads Collins in every major public poll and holds a wide fundraising advantage, the newspaper reported.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution political reporter Greg Bluestein noted that Ossoff is running a “no-mercy campaign designed to widen the gap.” This has left some Republicans “openly doubting” whether Collins can win, while others keep their distance from his campaign, the analysis said.
Collins recently promoted a poll that showed him trailing Ossoff by 7 percentage points, according to the newspaper. He treated the result as encouraging because an earlier survey had put him down by double digits.
A blowout loss would do more than send Ossoff back to Washington for another six years and fuel talk of a 2028 presidential run, the newspaper reported. It “could also swamp Republicans down the ticket.”
That “anxiety was bubbling beneath the surface” at a recent campaign event for Rick Jackson, the Republican nominee for governor, Bluestein reported.
Many of Jackson’s supporters believe the billionaire businessman’s enormous financial advantage, his rise from foster care to a health care fortune, and his campaign strategy would normally give him an edge over Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, the newspaper reported.
Some of those same allies are now asking whether Jackson can still win if Ossoff carries Georgia by 6 percentage points, the analysis said. Or by 8.
Some Republicans say a Democratic takeover of the Georgia House “isn’t out of the picture” if Ossoff scores a runaway victory, according to the newspaper.
Republicans have held that chamber without a break since January 2005, when the party took control after winning a majority in the November 2004 elections, the Associated Press reported. The grip on the legislature has outlasted the party’s losses in statewide federal races, and Democrats now hold both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats, with Ossoff joined by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA).
Glenn Richardson became Georgia’s first Republican speaker of the House since Reconstruction when lawmakers elected him on Jan. 10, 2005, according to a statement issued at the time by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican.
Republicans hold 99 of the chamber’s 180 seats to Democrats’ 81, and 91 are needed for a majority, according to seat counts compiled ahead of this year’s election. Democrats would have to flip a net of 10 seats to end the run.
Ossoff’s campaign is not simply trying to win, the newspaper reported, but to run up a margin large enough to reshape the political climate in races far below his own. Georgia voters go to the polls Nov. 3.
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