After a string of recounts and runoffs, it’s official that Rep. Lee Anderson will be the Republican nominee in Georgia’s 12th Congressional District.
Georgia election officials say a recount has upheld state Rep. Lee Anderson as the winner of the Republican primary runoff in the state’s 12th Congressional District.
Secretary of State Brian Kemp said the new vote tally conducted Wednesday gave the same result for the Aug. 21 runoff as the initial count certified a day earlier. Both showed that Anderson of Grovetown defeated Augusta businessman Rick W. Allen by just 159 votes.
Allen had asked for the recount Tuesday and it was granted automatically under state law. That’s because Anderson’s victory margin was less than 1 percent of the total 27,411 votes cast.
Anderson will face Democratic Rep. John Barrow in the fall campaign. The district covers 19 eastern Georgia counties including the cities of Augusta, Statesboro, Vidalia and Dublin.
Barrow is vulnerable but a number of factors are at play which make it Georgia’s most competitive Congressional contest. From the Savannah Morning News:
The 12th has drawn national attention since boundary changes that tilted it toward the GOP left the job up for grabs.
Barrow, who’s amassed at least $1.4 million to defend his seat, isn’t going away without a fight.
“Lee Anderson,” he said in a prepared statement, “has adopted a partisan plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, forcing seniors to pay thousands more in health care costs … they can’t afford.
“Unfortunately, Lee is just another politician who can’t be trusted to stand up for folks in this district.”
If those remarks by Barrow sound familiar, they should. Scaring people into voting for them with misinformation has become one of the few things Democrats have left to run on in 2012.
Anderson spokesman Ryan Mahoney responded to the accusations made by Barrow.
“The BarrowObama shuffle continues,” Mahoney said. “Losing and desperate, John Barrow is attempting to change the subject by attacking Lee Anderson and lying to voters… .”
Now that GA-12 is official, so is the Operation Counterweight final list. You can learn more about Lee Anderson here. Donate to his campaign here. Follow him on Twitter here, and connect on Facebook here.
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Comments
Dunno if Anderson can beat Barrow in November, but at least we now now what our ballot choices will be.
Believe me, this is a real shit sandwich.
Lee Anderson cannot speak in public. He bailed on the majority of the debates in the primary; he’s unable to speak in complete sentences…like, for real, cannot craft a full sentence in English. It’s unbelievable this guy has been in the GA statehouse.
Augusta (second biggest city in GA, big metro center in the district) was embroiled in a partisan race to replace a long-time and popular sheriff. For racial reasons (yes, in 2012) the sheriff candidates ran in the Dem. primary b/c the Dem ticket will have more single-party votes in Augusta/Richmond County come November.
Lee Anderson, ostensibly a farmer, was wildly popular in the rural counties and suburbs of Augusta, and two Augusta candidates split the rest of the vote. When Lee Anderson went into a runoff with one of the Augusta candidates, 2500 ppl voted on the Republican ballot in Richmond County, and 27,000 ppl voted on the Dem ballot in Richmond County. The magnitude of the crossover vote was tremendous.
Even with all the party switching in Augusta and outsized influence in the rural counties, Lee Anderson only eked it out by 159 votes.
John Barrow (Dem incumbent) is the last white Democrat in the deep South. The GA legislature drew the district lines after reapportionment to replace Barrow, but GA-12 GOP voters really screwed the pooch on their primary choice. Hell, I wouldn’t be that surprised if Dems in the other countries in the district changed registrations just like the GOP in Richmond County…if so, well played. And we’ll wait again until 2014, Barrow still has a job.
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