ATLANTA (AP) — Democrat Eric Giesler claimed an upset victory Tuesday in a special election in a historically Republican Georgia House district.
Giesler said he was the winner of the contest in which he beat Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest by about 200 votes out of more than 11,000 in the final unofficial results.
Robert Sinners, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office, said there could be several provisional ballots remaining before the totals are tallied.
The guest did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment late Tuesday.
Democrats made a string of electoral gains in 2025 as party voters sought to express dissatisfaction with Republican President Donald Trump.
In November, they pulled off two upsets in Georgia's special elections for the state Public Service Commission, unseating two Republican incumbents in campaigns fueled by anger over rising energy prices.
Across the country, Democrats won gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey by wide margins. The Democrat defeated a Trump-backed Republican on Tuesday in the officially nonpartisan race for Miami mayor, becoming the first from his party to win the job in nearly 30 years.
Democrats have also done well in some of the races they lost, such as the U.S. House race in Tennessee last week and the Georgia Senate race in September.
Republicans remain firmly in control of the Georgia House of Representatives, but their majority is likely to fall to 99-81 when lawmakers return in January. Also Tuesday, voters in the heavily Republican 2nd District in Atlanta's northwest suburbs sent Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders to a Jan. 6 runoff to fill the vacancy left by the death of Rep. Mandy Ballinger.
The GOP majority has shrunk from 119 Republicans in 2015. This will be the first time the GOP will have fewer than 100 seats in the lower house since 2005, when they won control for the first time since Reconstruction.
The race between Giesler and Guest in the 121st District in the Athens area northeast of Atlanta was to replace Republican Markus Wiedauer, who had held the seat since 2018 but resigned midway through that term to focus on business interests.
Most of the county is in Oconee County, a Republican suburb of Athens that is part of the heavily Democratic Athens-Clarke County. Republicans forced Athens-Clarke to include one heavily Democratic district, splitting the rest of the district into three seats reserved for Republicans.
Giesler ran against Widauer in 2024, losing 61% to 39%. Guest ran for office this year for the first time.
The Democrat briefly won control of the district in a 2017 special election but lost to Widover in 2018.
Giesler works for an insurance technology startup and owns a gourmet grocery store. He advocated for improving health care, increasing affordability and reinvesting Georgia's surplus funds.
Guest is president of a trucking company and touts his community ties, promising to improve public safety and lower taxes. He was endorsed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, an Athens native, and collected far more campaign donations than Giesler.
