Gun control activist Lucy McBath, whose son was killed in a 2012 shooting, wins congressional seat once held by Newt Gingrich
- Lucy McBath, a progressive gun control and civil rights activist whose son was shot and killed in 2012, pulled out a narrow win in a red Georgia district on Thursday.
- McBath beat GOP Rep. Karen Handel, who herself scored a competitive victory over Democrat Jon Ossoff in a high-profile special election just last year.
- McBath, who will be the first non-white congressperson to represent her Atlanta-area district, is one of a handful of black candidates who beat the odds in red districts on Tuesday.
Lucy McBath, a progressive Democrat and gun control activist whose son was shot and killed in 2012, pulled out a narrow win in a red Georgia district on Thursday.
McBath beat GOP Rep. Karen Handel, who herself scored a competitive victory over Democrat Jon Ossoff in a high-profile special election just last year.
McBath, who is black, was not expected to win the affluent, overwhelmingly white district in suburban Atlanta. The sixth district seat was once held by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and more recently by President Donald Trump's former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.
While the man who killed McBath's son Jordan was sentenced to life without parole in 2014, McBath says most victims of gun violence never find justice. She decided to run for Congress after 17 were killed at a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
"For me, I was looking beyond my own tragedy, looking for the other tragedies that were most definitely going to happen if I didn't keep talking about this crisis," McBath told CNN.
The race was called on Thursday morning, with McBath leading Handel by about 3,000 votes - or one percent of the vote.
"After carefully reviewing all of the election results data, it is clear that I came up a bit short on Tuesday," Handel said in a statement on Thursday morning. "Congratulations to Representative-Elect Lucy McBath and I send her only good thoughts and much prayer for the journey that lies ahead for her."