Handel first female GOP rep elected to Congress in Georgia

Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff on Tuesday night in Georgia's special House elections.

But he later shifted to focus on local concerns to match his Republican rival Karen Handel, a former secretary of state who argued the vote was a local issue and unrelated to Trump's presidency.

President Trump congratulated Handel via Twitter.

Obviously, it would have provided a huge lift for Democrats, and delivered a major blow to Republicans, if Jon Ossoff had prevailed in Tuesday's special election in the Atlanta suburbs.

A little after 10:30 p.m. ET, Handel took the stage and told supporters she'd received a call from Ossoff conceding the race.

"Tonight, the people of Georgia's sixth district overwhelmingly voted not only for Karen, but also for President Trump's agenda of replacing our broken health care system, reforming an outdated tax code, and prioritizing infrastructure investment", said Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

But the Democrats always knew that this would be a tough fight in a district that hasn't gone for a Democrat since 1978, even for a centrist Democrat such as Ossoff.

But it wasn't what Democrats who pumped $23 million into Ossoff's campaign so desperately craved: A win.

With the addition of Handel, there will be 105 women representatives in Congress, accounting for 19.6 percent of overall members, according to the center's data.

The seats of Georgia and SC are typically seen as Republican strongholds, and they were able to hold off Democratic candidates seeking to take the spots in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. Its inexplicable to me that Donald Trump supporters can not or will not see that Democrats and Republicans alike lost so much more than an election.

(2) Seth Moulton, a congressman from MA and former Iraq war veteran, who tweeted that the loss should be a "wake up call" for Democrats. Trump tweeted late Tuesday.

The Georgia race ends as the most expensive House campaign in USA history, with a tab that may exceed $50 million.

Ossoff and Handel were the top two finishers in an April 19 primary, advancing to the one-on-one runoff election.

"Obstruction doesn't work!" Trump added.

It was the best shot the party had of the four House special elections this spring to win a seat that now belongs to Republicans.

In the weeks preceding the election, President Trump urged Georgians to vote for Handel. Handel didn't talk much about Trump on the trail but embraced him as the party's leader and welcomed him to the district if he so chose to go. "But understand, if you want to change America, you wanna change the world, you're much better off going into districts, campaigning for somebody, knocking on doors", Scarborough said. Voter suppression was so severe in 2016 that it arguably determined the victor in close states such as Wisconsin, where more than 200,000 voters were disenfranchised and Mr. Trump won by 22,748 votes.

The Georgia race - which got the bulk of the attention and record-breaking money - is a clear victory for the Republicans.

Though two previous opportunities to flip house seats in special elections in Kansas and Montana fell short this year, Georgia's sixth was thought to be within reach after Hillary Clinton almost turned the district blue in November.

Tuesday night's outcome in a special House race in Georgia was a triumph for the GOP, and the most recent and devastating illustration of the Democrats' problems - from a weak bench and recruiting problems to divisions about what the party stands for today.

"It's a big deal, and it tells you that something is happening", said Liam Donovan, a former Senate Republican campaign staffer and head of legislative and political affairs for a trade association.