October 16, 2018

This Democrat Just Seriously Outraised Her Republican Opponent in a Tight Georgia Race

Lucy McBath is gaining momentum in her face-off against Karen Handel in Georgia’s sixth.

Lucy McBath for Congress

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Lucy McBath, the Democratic candidate vying to represent Georgia’s six congressional district, raised nearly twice the amount as Republican incumbent Karen Handel in the last quarter, according figures released this week. 

While Handel still has raised more money over the entire campaign, the latest fundraising totals could be a sign of enthusiasm for McBath heading into the final stretch of the race. McBath reported raising about $960,000 in the third quarter, while Handel’s report shows about $540,000 in the same time period.

A McBath win would be a significant upset in a state that’s been all consumed recently with the competitive governor’s race and allegations of voter suppression on the part of Republican gubernatorial candidate and current secretary of state Brian Kemp. McBath is a former Delta flight attendant and first-time candidate who is running in part on a gun safety platform, inspired by the high-profile shooting death of her teenage son, Jordan Davis, by a white motorist at a Florida gas station in 2012. Handel, meanwhile, served as Georgia’s secretary of state before narrowly defeating upstart Democrat Jon Ossoff in a high-profile 2017 special election. That race also drew headlines for its massive fundraising hauls. But the state’s sixth congressional district has long been a Republican stronghold, and Ossoff ultimately finished just under three points short of Handel in a run off. 

“It is not surprising Handel is posting weak fundraising numbers because she is out of step with this district,” McBath’s communications director, Jake Orvis, said in a press release.

While McBath’s team celebrates the fundraising haul, Handel—who has carefully tried to distance herself from President Donald Trump—is still seen as a slight favorite in the race, and a poll last month showed with her a two percent lead over McBath. She also has almost $980,000 cash on hand, while McBath has just over $700,000. The last Democrat to represent the district was Jack Flynt, who left office in 1979.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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