Late Wednesday night, Rep. Karen Handel (R-GA) issued a statement conceding her reelection bid to upstart Democratic challenger Lucy McBath in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, one of the most reliably Republican districts in the country.
“After carefully reviewing all of the election results data, it is clear that I came up a bit short on Tuesday,” said Handel in the statement. Her loss hands Democrats the seat that once belonged to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and eventual Trump administration cabinet secretary Tom Price.
U.S. Rep. Karen Handel concedes to Democrat Lucy McBath in #GA06 #gapol pic.twitter.com/GzEHJTNpOp
— Tamar Hallerman (@ajconwashington) November 8, 2018
Trump’s selection of Price to fill the role of Health and Human Services secretary forced a special election last June. Handel, who resigned from her role as vice president of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure in 2012 after nearly ruining the charity by using it as platform for her own anti-choice agenda, ran against Democrat Jon Ossoff in a closely-watched and hotly contested special election, one of the first during the Trump administration.
The seat will now be filled by Lucy McBath, the mother of 17-year-old Jordan Davis who, in 2012, was shot and murdered by a white man who complained Davis was playing his music too loudly. McBath made gun control a central pillar of her campaign, and was one of the handful of mothers who lost sons to gun violence to campaign across the country for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
McBath’s win further cements Democratic control of the House of Representatives in the next congress. With 14 races still not officially called, Democrats have already picked up 29 seats. They needed 23 to seize the majority.