The election on April 18th will fill the congressional seat that has been held by a Republican since the 1970s.
At least that's true for Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and his 2010 primary rival Karen Handel.
But it's a different story in Georgia, where political neophyte Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, is running against Republican Karen Handel for the seat vacated by Rep. Tom Price when he became Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The suspect, identified as James T Hodgkinson, allegedly opened fire on Republican lawmakers as they practised for an annual congressional charity baseball game.
There's another election Tuesday in SC, to replace former Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a Republican who is now serving as President Trump's budget director.
Brad Carver, the chairman of the Republican Party in Georgia's 11th congressional district, isn't being shy about exploiting last week's shooting at a Republican baseball practice to help his party win a critical special election. He stresses his Trump hatred to the base, while his positions on other issues appeal to more moderate voters in the district.
"I'll tell you what: I think the shooting is going to win this election for us", Carver said Saturday after a get-out-the-vote rally for Handel in Chamblee.
If November was the height of political winter for Democrats, the party faithful have been desperately searching ever since for the first signs of spring. Winning in this once-safe GOP district would follow House special election victories this year in GOP-held districts in Kansas and Montana. "I don't want my district to have negative representation".
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Because of the district's status as suburban, educated and diverse, the Georgia race could be a harbinger of Democrats' ability to compete for similar Republican-held seats in places like Orange County, California, the Philadelphia suburbs and NY state in 2018.
Handel, on the other hand, has lived in Georgia's Sixth District for decades-almost as long as Jon Ossoff has been alive, as she pointed out at a recent debate. In fact, they'll probably find a way to argue about that even if Ossoff does win!
It's one election; a single seat out of 435.
Issue One estimates that almost half of the money dumped into the race has been controlled by outsider groups, such as the political action committee behind an attack ad tying Ossoff and Democrats to the Alexandria shooting that left a Republican congressman in critical condition.
The race has now become the most expensive House race in US history with a price tag exceeding $50 million.
Great America Alliance, a pro-Trump non-profit group that previously ran ads attacking former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey during his testimony, is running an ad that quotes Obama narrating his autobiographical book "Dreams From My Father".
"We're seeing absolute resistance to everything this president does", he continued. Moderates and independents out there want to give him a chance. The contest has attracted national attention as a test of whether Democrats can turn anti-Trump energy into results at the ballot box, and whether Republicans can avoid being dragged down by the president's sinking popularity.
An ad linked the Virginia shooting to Democrats and Georgia political upstart Jon Ossoff, showing that not everyone is heeding the calls for kinder rhetoric. "Democrats see an opportunity here because Trump underperformed". An image of the majority whip on a stretcher is shown (Kathy Griffin and the severed head later make an appearance) as a voice narrates, "The unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting Republicans".
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