Karen Handel Loses Seat to BLM Mom, Lucy McBath, Who Spoke At DNC

Republican Rep. Karen Handel conceded to Democratic challenger Lucy McBath in Georgia's tight 6th District election on Thursday.

McBath is a gun control activist. Her son was shot and killed at a gas station in 2012 over a dispute about loud music.

[...]The district drew national attention — and a flood of campaign money from both sides – in a widely watched special election in 2017.

With some $8.4 million in campaign funds, Handel outspent McBath by 5 to 1. The race also drew $3 million more in outside spending.

The district went for Trump in 2016 by a slim 1.5-point margin after heavily supporting Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008 by double digits.

McBath won her primary runoff earlier this year, but national coverage of her race initially paled in comparison to that of Jon Ossoff. In 2017, he ran against Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, in a special election to replace previous Rep. Tom Price. While local and national Democrats focused on Ossoff's campaign as a referendum on Trump, that message was not enough to put him over the top in Georgia.

There was a chance that the 2018 contest against incumbent Handel could go a similar route. As she did with Ossoff, Handel argued that McBath wasn't truly a resident of the district (McBath previously lived with her husband in Tennessee) and that she couldn't represent its voters. When McBath criticized Handel for taking money from the National Rifle Association, Handel countered that McBath had accepted money from Everytown for Gun Safety. Handel also attempted to distance herself from Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, arguing that the vote happened before she took office.

In an election cycle dominated by national politics, McBath ran a deeply personal campaign Where Ossoff's campaign failed to connect with enough local voters to win, McBath succeeded. As a black woman competing in Georgia at the same time as governor candidate Stacey Abrams, McBath was likely helped by the top of the ticket. But beyond that, McBath used her personal stories of losing her son and surviving breast cancer twice, to connect with voters. McBath made inroads in a majority-white congressional district and gained national attention, with the New York Times arguing that she was "redefining social justice in politics this year."