WASHINGTON _ Early returns pointed to a close race and a long night in a Georgia congressional contest that has become a nationally watched referendum on the Trump administration.
Based on only early voting results in the Atlanta suburban district, the race remained too close to call as of early Tuesday evening.
Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel were running nearly even with tens of thousands of votes to be counted.
The race to fill the seat vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has become the costliest House contest in history. The election will gauge the extent to which President Donald Trump is a political liability to fellow Republicans.
At stake is a seat Republicans have controlled for decades with little effort. But uneasiness with Trump among the electorate in this rapidly diversifying region and an energized base of Democrats who have activated a Bernie Sanders-style fundraising operation have put the seat in play.
Among the most concerned about the outcome is Trump himself, who has been attacking Ossoff on Twitter since Monday. If the seat slips away from Republicans, Trump could start to lose his grip on GOP lawmakers in Congress.
A loss by Handel would push vulnerable GOP candidates in moderate districts to start distancing themselves from the president, which would further stymie his agenda. If the past is any guide, some Republican lawmakers would start to ponder retirement rather than face the kind of tumult that hit the party in what only a few months ago was friendly territory in Georgia.
Democrats also have a lot on the line. They are desperate for a win, and despite making every effort to keep the expectations of activists measured, failure to notch a victory after all the effort and money poured into this race would probably lead to a fresh round of soul-searching and a renewed debate over the path the party needs to take to start winning again. The Democrats' ability to recruit top-tier candidates for competitive � and even long-shot � congressional seats could suffer if Ossoff falls short.
Balloting Tuesday was complicated by torrential rain in the area, creating additional worries for the candidates as they scrambled to get out the vote. Strategists pondered how the weather might hurt one side or the other, but it was impossible to gauge in this off-season special election with unprecedented spending, in which all the usual turnout assumptions do not necessarily apply.
Democrats saw an opening in the region after Trump won the district by less than 2 percentage points. They are looking to their effort there to chart the path for Democrats nationwide to rebuild their power base in one-time GOP strongholds such as Orange County, Calif.
Now at the end of a campaign in which $60 million will have been spent by the candidates and an assortment of ideological and political outside groups, Ossoff is arguably as well known as his Republican opponent. Handel is a former Georgia secretary of state and former executive at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity for breast cancer. She played a major role in that organization's decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood _ and became a favorite of the right along the way.
In April, the cash infusion for Ossoff, the eagerness of Democrats to consolidate around him and widespread voter anxiety in the district over Trump contributed to a surprisingly strong showing in an open primary. Ossoff won 48 percent of the vote, just 2 points shy of winning the race outright. Handel split the conservative vote with a few other well-funded Republicans, winning 18 percent.
Republicans in this district have since rallied around their nominee, making the race too close to call right up to election day.
Particularly invested in the race have been Californians. More Californians have contributed to it than donors from any other state, including Georgia. San Francisco has played front and center in campaign attacks. Liberal Hollywood celebrities are lending their star power.
Handel has repeatedly sought to make an issue out of Ossoff's California money. The Democrat has raised nearly $5 for every $1 Handel has raised, pushing her to rely heavily on millions of dollars in spending from outside conservative groups, which have poured money into the race at more than double the rate of outside liberal groups.
One of the conservative groups, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., broadcast an ad shot in San Francisco aimed at unnerving Georgians. It features a diverse cast of actors in dressed in eclectic Bay Area chic cheerfully rooting for Ossoff. Example: "Higher taxes, bigger government, sweet!" declares a man with dreadlocks and an earring. "There is a reason Bay Area liberals have contributed more to Jon Ossoff's campaign than people of Georgia. He's one of us," says a woman with a "Cut the Military Now" button and wacky plaid hat.
That claim, in fact, is false. Fact-checkers noted Georgians have actually contributed considerably more to Ossoff than Bay Area folks.
But Ossoff also helped drive the narrative that he was an outsider by choosing to live outside the district. He is a resident of Atlanta, where his girlfriend is finishing medical school. Trump has been attacking the candidate, who grew up in the district, as an outsider.
"Democrat Jon Ossoff, who wants to raise your taxes to the highest level and is weak on crime and security, doesn't even live in district," Trump tweeted Tuesday. He did much the same on Monday.
GOP operatives in Orange Country are watching nervously. The demographics in that longtime Republican bastion of Southern California in many ways resemble those of the Georgia district up for grabs Tuesday. Democrats have even more momentum in Orange County, which voted for Hillary Clinton in November. The four House Republicans representing the county are among the lawmakers most aggressively targeted for defeat in 2018 by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The committee has moved its West Coast command center, long located in Washington, D.C., out to Irvine.
Political strategists are loath to read too much into the results of special elections, which take place on the off-season and tend to get wrapped up in local issues that don't necessarily apply to the broader electorate. But amid all the national attention this race is getting, whichever party loses will have a tough time downplaying the results.
