Dr. Jason Johnson

Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell

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Democrats Use the Force in #GA06 Special Election, Strike a Blow Against ‘Darth’ Trump

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If you are part of the Resistance to Trump, the Georgia 6th Congressional District’s special election Tuesday has given you something to cheer about. Feel free to read the rest of this article as if it’s the opening crawl of a Star Wars film, laying out how the Rebel Alliance has their first minor victory against Darth Trump (or Sessions, or Kushner or Bannon, etc.). The fight is far from over, but 30-year-old Jon Ossoff just might be the New Hope the Democrats are looking for.

The 6th District was up for a special election because sitting Republican Rep. Tom Price was brought up to the big leagues to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services. While Republicans have held this district for close to 40 years, it’s been changing. Yes, there are plenty of Paneras and Starbucks, but you also have In & Out Burger, and the whole Buford Highway Corridor has some of the best hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese and Mexican food in the Southwest.

The district is 13 percent African American and 13 percent Latino, and although affluent conservative whites have migrated into North Fulton County into places like Alpharetta, closer to the city, places like Cobb and DeKalb counties are nothing like the conservative power bases that supported Newt Gingrich when he repped the district in the ’90s.

There was a scrum for the seat, with 11 Republicans, a few Democrats and a few independents in the race. Millions of dollars poured into the race, mostly in attack ads against the Democratic front-runner, Ossoff. The GOP dredged up old YouTube videos of Ossoff cosplaying as Han Solo from his college days at Georgetown and suggested that he was too “immature” to be in Congress. Of course it kinda backfired—what could be more inspiring to Democrats seeking to battle the evil that is the Trump White House than a Star Wars-themed election? Ossoff embraced the role fully.

A 30-year-old documentary filmmaker who worked for and considers Democratic Georgia Rep. John Lewis his mentor (Obi Jon Lewis, obviously), Ossoff made a startling contrast with the GOP front-runner, Karen Handel. Handel is a former Fulton County Board of Commissioners chair and Georgia secretary of state; she’s Georgia through and through; and her home base of North Fulton is where she draws her strength. However, in this first round of voting, Ossoff had the Force on his side.

He exceeded expectations by winning just over 48 percent of the vote, which is better than Hillary Clinton did just eight months ago (she lost to Trump 47 percent to 48 percent). Because no one got over 50 percent of the vote, however, there will be a runoff between the top two vote getters, Ossoff and Handel (who got 19 percent), on June 20.

“I’m most encouraged by the turnout,” says Nse Ufot, head of the nonpartisan New Georgia Project, which encourages greater voter turnout among single women, minorities and the poor. “Not only was this [Georgia’s 6th District] a Republican stronghold held by GOP giants like Gingrich and [Sen. Johnny] Isakson, it’s been gerrymandered and designed to retain their stranglehold on power.”

Ufot, however, cautions anyone who thinks this special election is the end of the battle. The Voting Rights Act requires that voter registration for any election end no more than 30 days before citizens vote. But Secretary of State Brian Kemp is trying to claim that the June 20 runoff is just an extension of Tuesday’s special election, and therefore voter registration actually ended March 20. A 90-day blackout of voting is clearly voter suppression and exactly the kind of dirty trick that could keep Ossoff from adding to his lead when he faces Mandel in June.

However, for now, there is victory; the Empire took a hit. So time for fireworks, and GIFs of Democrats dancing with Ewoks across the galaxy.

The real battle starts tomorrow, when the fundraising and focus will be on the two major-party candidates, and a race in which everyone from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to the White House will have a lot at stake. Help the Resistance, Jon Ossoff; you’re their only hope.

This article originally appeared online at The Root.

MSNBC: Jason Johnson on Jon Ossoff versus Karen Handel in #GA06 Special Election

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On MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle, The Root Politics Editor Jason Johnson and former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh discuss the issues of the day.

On the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel.

On Republican Congressional criticism of President Trump

On the USS Carl Vinson, which was thought to be near North Korea but was actually in the Indian Ocean.

On Bill O’Reilly’s impending departure from Fox News.

Special Elections Prove Democratic Resistance Is Still Weak

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I got a lot of conflicting messages about winning and losing as a kid. I remember hearing, “It’s not how you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” from my dad when my eighth-grade youth football team lost Every. Single. Game (we actually didn’t score one point all season).

Then, in youth basketball, it was about how you won a game, and whether you could respectfully shake hands with the other team even after blowing them out for four quarters. Finally, in high school track, it wasn’t about winning or losing but about whether you beat your personal best, improving every race, because the wins would eventually come.

A lot of these attitudes informed my views on campaign politics: Be respectful, play fair; a close loss is still respectable. All that applied until Barack Obama got elected, and Republicans turned every election into a foaming-at-the-mouth, postapocalyptic death match. Now in politics, you win or you lose, there is no second place, and sportsmanship is for losers. This ain’t quidditch; it’s rollerball.

Unfortunately, after Kansas’ 4th Congressional District special election this week, it seems like the Democratic Party is still trapped playing youth ball in the park, while the Republicans are Division I.

On Tuesday night, James Thompson—a Democratic, gun-owning, pro-Bernie Sanders civil rights attorney—lost a special election to Republican and vaguely pro-Trump Ron Estes. The special election was set to replace Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, who was tapped by the Trump administration to run the CIA. This was a deeply red Republican district that hadn’t voted a Democrat into office in decades, and in the 2016 election, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by almost 30 points. However, with Trump’s awful approval ratings and overall discontent with his presidency, local Democrats were encouraged. Unfortunately, none of that mattered.

Estes squeaked by with a 53-to-46-percent victory over Thompson, a slim Republican victory in Trump country, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless. Some Democrats are encouraged by the strong showing and see this as a sign of things to come in more competitive races like the Georgia 6th in mid-April, but that enthusiasm is a bit premature.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, led by newly elected Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, really dropped the ball on the Kansas 4th by barely spending any money there, and there’s reason to believe that rather than a true 50-state-fight-for-every-district strategy, Democrats will keep triangulating themselves out of any substantive victories.

The larger problem is that for all of the special elections that have happened in the nation since Trump got into office, most of them have just been a holding pattern for Democrats. Seats were maintained in Delaware and Connecticut, but there aren’t many examples of Democrats actually “flipping” Republican seats to Democratic ones, let alone replacing accommodating Democrats with more Trump-resistant ones.

For “resistance” to actually work, there have to be more tangible victories; you have to advance. Participation trophies are nice, but that won’t stop voter-ID laws, reject a travel ban or stop an encroaching police terror state encouraged by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Had 80 percent of the Democrats who turned out for Clinton in 2016 turned out for Thompson in 2017, Kansas would’ve given Trump a dark-blue eye right at the end of his first 100 days in office.

The solution moving forward is for Democrats to take on the same no-holds-barred “participation trophies are for losers” attitude of the Republican Party. In the month of April, there are congressional or state Senate-level elections in Georgia (6th Congressional District and 32nd state-Senate District) and Connecticut (District 68), followed in May by half-a-dozen elections in other states. Democrats can no longer be afraid to nationalize every election. Every House and Senate race, every dog catcher or district attorney, should be a referendum on Trump.

Yes, Trump is popular in some districts, but if the failure of health care showed anything, it’s that policy concerns can drive even Republicans to re-evaluate their votes. Will flipping a state Senate seat in Connecticut radically change what’s going on Washington? Of course not. But sometimes it’s just about putting points on the board. Every little victory, be it a state Senate or state’s attorney race, is another notch on the belt of the Democrats. And each victory in a red state or flipped district will embolden even better candidates to come out and run.

Democrats need to get serious about winning, not parsing which Democratic seats are worth fighting for and which are “long shots.” Not worrying about “arousing the GOP base” by nationalizing a local campaign. There is no shaking hands and saying, “Good game, good game” with this current batch of Republicans, let alone this administration. And no amount of orange slices and juice boxes can console voters facing environmental disaster and Russian occupation. At some point, resistance has to turn into victories; otherwise they’re just scrimmaging.
This article originally appeared online at The Root.