In yet another sign that the GOP’s once-reliable electoral machinery is coughing and sputtering its way through the 2025 special election cycle, a Georgia House race in Cherokee County, long considered safely red territory, has landed in a runoff. And not because Republicans were dominating the field. Quite the opposite.
What to Know…
Republican turmoil is undermining the party even in historically safe districts. The fractured GOP field and internal MAGA disputes prevented any Republican from commanding even 30% of the vote in a deep-red district.
Trump’s historically low approval rating is dragging down Republican candidates nationwide. His unpopularity and the movement’s infighting are reshaping voter behavior, giving Democrats unexpected openings.
Democrats are becoming competitive in places once out of reach. Scott Sanders’ near-tie in a district Trump won by 45 points highlights a dramatic political shift fueled by voters rejecting extremism and seeking moderation.
Republican Bill Fincher managed to limp into first place with just 27.4 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results from the Georgia Secretary of State. Democrat Scott Sanders, the lone Democrat in a six-candidate scrum, finished a razor-thin second at 26.7 percent, an astonishingly strong showing in a district Donald Trump carried by 45 points. In other words, Republicans had the entire menu, and Democratic voters still flocked to the only entrée that wasn’t seasoned with MAGA infighting.
The rest of the Republican field fractured the vote like a party that can no longer agree on what day of the week it is. Brice Futch finished with 22.3 percent, Ann Gazell with 12.1 percent, Rajpal Sagoo with 11.2 percent, and William Ware scraped together a barely visible 0.3 percent. In a saner political moment, a district this red would have produced a coronation, not a clown car pileup. But this is the GOP of 2025, where fealty to Trump is mandatory, Trump’s approval ratings are historically low, and nobody can decide which version of MAGA they’re supposed to be loyal to anymore.
Fincher attempted to put a brave face on the results, sending out an email heavy on blessings and prayers, as if divine intervention might be required to pull Republicans back together for the runoff. His insistence that “each of the candidates ran a positive and dignified campaign” was a generous interpretation, given how thoroughly the conservative vote atomized into six pieces. “We will pull together,” he added, an optimistic claim for a party that has spent the year publicly tearing itself apart.
Sanders, meanwhile, didn’t need celestial reassurance. He needed only the numbers, which spoke for themselves.
“The voters of District 23 have shown that they are looking for common sense positions and moderation and not political stunts or polarizing agendas,” he said, in a line that neatly captured the GOP’s growing suburban hemorrhage. Sanders was quick to point out the seismic shift: “We turned a District that Trump won by 45 points into a real competition.”
That “real competition” now heads to a January 6 runoff, fittingly, a date already seared into American political memory for the last time the Republican Party lost control of its own voters.
This time, the chaos is of a quieter variety, but no less telling. A severely weakened Trump is now dragging down the Republican brand, MAGA factions are either quitting or knifing each other in the dark, and GOP candidates are unable to hit 30 percent in counties they used to win by default.
Republicans once talked about a red wave. In Georgia’s Cherokee County this week, they were lucky to locate a puddle.