Democrats gained a northeast Georgia House seat during an off-year special election Tuesday in the latest sign of their growing momentum in the state.
Eric Gisler, a tech executive and small business owner, took the lead in the Athens-area district with 50.85% of the vote, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s office. Republican candidate Mack “Dutch” Guest IV was nearly 200 votes behind, with 49.15% of the vote.
And in metro Atlanta, two candidates vying for an open House seat are headed to a runoff after no one managed to clear the 50% threshold required to win a seat outright in the six-way contest. Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders advanced to a Jan. 6 runoff.
The two races are the latest in a series of off-year special elections for state legislative seats in Georgia to replace lawmakers who have died, resigned, or been appointed to other political offices.
Here are the results from Tuesday’s elections.
House District 121
Progressive voters had cause for celebration in the race for House District 121: Gisler gained a narrow lead over Guest, the Republican candidate, late Tuesday night.
The conservative-leaning district, which covers parts of Clarke and Oconee counties, has been under Republican control since 2019. However, former state Rep. Marcus Wiedower, a Watkinsville Republican, abruptly resigned from his seat earlier this year to focus on his work as vice president of external affairs at the real estate firm Hillpointe.
Gisler, who made affordability a key focus of this year’s campaign, previously challenged Wiedower in 2024, but received less than 40% of the vote. This year, he credited his campaign’s success to a strong ground game, as well as his focus on issues like health care access and the rising cost of living, which he said likely appealed to some Republican voters.
“We had the right message in this time,” Gisler said in a phone call, adding that his opponent “ran on tired MAGA talking points.”
Guest, an Oconee County resident who helps run a Watkinsville-based transportation business, centered his campaign around protecting conservative values, as well as improving transportation, strengthening education and keeping communities safe. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night.
Ken Martin, who chairs the Democratic National Committee, celebrated Gisler’s win, drawing comparisons to the party’s historic November victory, in which Democrats flipped two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission – wins that Georgia Democrats had said earlier helped to lift their hopes in the legislative race.
“Fresh off the resounding victories in the Georgia Public Service Commissioner races and now this historic flip, the DNC will continue to invest, organize, and compete in every corner of Georgia,” he said in a statement.
House District 23
A second special election over a metro Atlanta seat was less decisive. Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders will be advancing to a runoff election after each candidate received about a quarter of the vote during Tuesday’s election, according to unofficial results. Georgia law requires a runoff election when no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote.
Fincher, a Republican former district attorney who now owns an RV park, finished with the most votes at 1,373, good for 27.4% of the vote, while Scott Sanders, a business executive, got 1,340 votes, or about 26.7%. The remaining votes were divided among four other Republican candidates.
Republican state Rep. Mandi Ballinger of Canton died in October after a long battle with cancer, leaving her seat open. The district, which includes Canton, part of northern Holly Springs and the surrounding unincorporated areas, heavily favors a Republican.
In a phone call, Fincher said he chalked up his first-place finish to his team connecting directly with voters, and he thanked his opponents and asked for their support for the coming runoff.
“Our biggest strength was teamwork, communication directly with the voters, and with the quality of people that ran, all the candidates, top-notch people trying to do their best, all being positive, all dignified. And when you run a race like that, there’s mutual respect among every one of us,” Fincher said.
Sanders said his second-place finish “shows there’s Democrats up here in Cherokee County.”
“We went into this eyes wide open, knowing how red the district was,” he said. “It was a district that Trump won by 45 points, so we knew it was going to be an uphill battle, but we also intended to take this seriously and make it a hard-fought campaign, and we did.”
Sanders said he would not have made it to the runoff without his team of volunteers, who knocked on nearly 2,000 doors in three weeks in order to get out the vote.
With the runoff set for Jan. 6 – less than a month away, with most of that right in the middle of holiday season when people are more concerned with travel and celebrations than politics – both remaining candidates said they will work hard to keep up the momentum.
The runoff may receive more attention after Gisler’s upset win.
“Georgia Republicans, we need to sound the alarm from now until November, starting with helping Bill Fincher win the runoff for HD 23,” Republican Insurance Commissioner John King, who is up for reelection next year, posted on social media. “Our donors aren’t motivated and our voters aren’t either.”
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
