Most-expensive congressional campaign in history comes to a head in Georgia

Welcome to the final day of the Sixth District congressional contest between Karen Handel and Jon Ossoff.

HRC has been organizing to send pro-equality candidate Jon Ossoff to represent Georgia’s sixth district in Congress.

Polls in Georgia close at 7 p.m. Tuesday. The Republicans have held Georgia’s 6th Congressional District since the 1970s and, really, since the political realignment of the South. In the first round of voting, Ossoff won 48.1% of the vote and Handel 19.8% but the next five-best candidates were Republicans and they are now scratched from the ballot.

“Karen Handel is a clear extremist”, Keauna Gregory, a regional campaign director for Planned Parenthood, told ABC News this past weekend. Ossoff has said, “history will condemn us” for doing so.

What it all means: No one is quite sure what to expect, aside from a close race. State officials, though, say they’re confident the technology is secure.

But an Ossoff victory would help Democrats raise money and recruit candidates as they try to win back control of the House of Representatives in 2018.

Trump, 70, took to Twitter Monday to encourage voters to elect Handel in the race for the Georgia 6th Congressional District. VERY weak on crime and illegal immigration, bad for jobs and wants higher taxes. I feel good about where we are.

Ossoff, a 30-year-old documentary filmmaker, has focused on entrepreneurship, cutting government waste, tech innovation, and generic national security, and he’s has sought to paint his opponent as a spendthrift who is in politics for herself. Berk responded to a guest column from the previous week, http://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/why-ossoff-has-earned-our-support/, that touted Ossoff’s support for Israel.

Republicans hold the advantage in this seat thanks to the strong GOP turnout in the Fulton and Cobb portions of the district. Handel and several neighbors received threatening letters with a white substance the Federal Bureau of Investigation later said was likely not hazardous. She barely mentioned him ahead of finishing second to Ossoff in an April primary but welcomed him for a private fundraiser later that month.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from weighing in on the race.

The country’s attention will turn to Georgia today, where voters in suburban Atlanta will decide the outcome of a bitterly fought race with national implications. Since the beginning of the election cycle, Ossoff has received $1.6 million in donations from California, $1.2 million from NY and $962,617 from Georgia, according to the Federal Election Commission.

There are a number of donors affiliated with Wall Street names, including individuals affiliated with hedge fund firm Elliott Management, Wells Fargo and KPMG, who all donated to the Republican candidate. And it would deal a discouraging psychological blow to Democrats who have poured so many hopes and dollars into this campaign.

Handel has benefited from outside money, too.

Smucker and Democrat Christina Hartman spent a combined $2.8 million through their own campaigns while $1.4 million was spent by political action committees and other sources. National Republicans’ House campaign arm added $4.5 million, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce chipped in another seven figures.