Democrat Jon Ossoff just short of outright win in Georgia House race

WASHINGTON - Democrat Jon Ossoff appeared unlikely to outright win a special House election in Georgia on Tuesday, a result that would mean the race in the suburban Atlanta district would continue until a June 20 runoff.

Election returns were not yet final late Tuesday, but Ossoff held a massive lead over the 17 other candidates in the field. But he was not on track, according to election analysts, to win the more than 50 percent of the vote necessary to avoid a runoff.

With 84 percent of precincts reporting, Ossoff had earned 49 percent of the vote, according to The Associated Press.

He is likely to face GOP candidate Karen Handel, the former Georgia secretary of state who outdistanced the other Republicans running.

Most election observers expected a late night of vote counting, with a race that could be decided by a single point or less.

The question was whether Ossoff, a 30-year-old owner of an investigative film company, could win outright in a district that hasn't been represented by a Democrat since 1979, in a race few gave him a serious chance of claiming as recently as February.

The Republican field was led by Handel, businessman and avid Trump supporter Bob Gray, and former Georgia state Sen. Judson Hill.

Georgia's 6th Congressional District has been a traditional Republican stronghold, represented in the 1980s and early 1990s by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It's strongly supported Republican presidential candidates, too, giving Mitt Romney a greater than 20-point win in 2012.

But Donald Trump's sharp-elbowed cultural worldview and provocative rhetoric helped Hillary Clinton make serious inroads in a place populated by wealthy, well-educated white voters, many of whom defected en masse from the GOP leader's ticket last year. Trump won the district by only about one point over Clinton.

That swing foreshadowed an opening for Ossoff, a former congressional aide who became a candidate for the open-seat race after former Rep. Tom Price became the president's secretary of Health and Human Services earlier this year.

Ossoff's candidacy became a sensation among liberal activists nationwide, who helped him raise more than $8 million in only two months - an astounding sum that helped him become an early front-runner in the race.

Even as he ran a campaign more focused on jobs and shaking up the Washington status quo, Ossoff became a symbol of the anti-Trump movement. And Democratic leaders say they hope the energy he's stirred in the party's base will be a sign of things to come in next year's midterm elections.

'We're the underdog in this,” Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on MSNBC on Monday. 'But we've got some real wind at our back at every level.”

National Republicans, hamstrung by a convoluted 11-candidate field in their own party, responded to Ossoff in force. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP-aligned Super PAC, and National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's political arm, spent millions of dollars attacking the Democrat in TV and digital ads. The attacks, Democrats concede, slowed Ossoff's momentum.

Although the Georgia race has received the most attention, it's not the only special House election to make waves this year. Last week, a House race in Kansas became unexpectedly competitive, with the GOP nominee defeating a Democrat by just seven points in a district Republicans won by more than 30 points in November.

Next month, Democrats and Republicans will tangle again in a House race in Montana, a contest where the Congressional Leadership Fund and NRCC are already running attack ads against Democratic nominee Rob Quist.