ATLANTA — Democrat Eric Gisler claimed an upset victory Tuesday in a special election in a historically Republican Georgia state House district.
Gisler said he was the winner of the contest, in which he was leading Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest by about 200 votes out of more than 11,000 in final unofficial returns.
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office, said there could be a few provisional ballots left before the tally is finalized.
“I think we had the right message for the time,” Gisler told The Associated Press in a phone interview. He credited his win to Democratic enthusiasm but also said some Republicans were looking for a change.
“A lot of what I would call traditional conservatives held their nose and voted Republican last year on the promise of low prices and whatever else they were selling,” Gisler said. “But they hadn’t received that.”
Guest did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment late Tuesday.
Democrats have seen a number of electoral successes in 2025 as the party’s voters have been eager to express dissatisfaction with Republican President Donald Trump.
In Georgia in November, they romped to two blowouts in statewide special elections for the Public Service Commission, unseating two incumbent Republicans in campaigns driven by discontent over rising electricity costs.
Nationwide, Democrats won governor’s races by broad margins in Virginia and New Jersey. On Tuesday a Democrat defeated a Trump-endorsed Republican in the officially nonpartisan race for Miami mayor, becoming the first from his party to win the post in nearly 30 years.
Democrats have also performed strongly in some races they lost, such as a Tennessee U.S. House race last week and a Georgia state Senate race in September.
Republicans remain firmly in control of the Georgia House, but their majority is likely fall to 99-81 when lawmakers return in January. Also Tuesday, voters in a second, heavily Republican district in Atlanta’s northwest suburbs sent Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders to a Jan. 6 runoff to fill a vacancy created when Rep. Mandi Ballinger died.
The GOP majority is down from 119 Republicans in 2015. It would be the first time the GOP holds fewer than 100 seats in the lower chamber since 2005, when they won control for the first time since Reconstruction.
The race between Gisler and Guest in House District 121 in the Athens area northeast of Atlanta was held to replace Republican Marcus Wiedower, who was in the seat since 2018 but resigned in the middle of this term to focus on business interests.
Most of the district is in Oconee County, a Republican suburb of Athens, reaching into heavily Democratic Athens-Clarke County. Republicans gerrymandered Athens-Clarke to include one strongly Democratic district, parceling out the rest of the county into three seats intended to be Republican.
Gisler ran against Wiedower in 2024, losing 61% to 39%. This year was Guest’s first time running for office.
A Democrat briefly won control of the district in a 2017 special election but lost to Wiedower in 2018.
Gisler, a 49-year-old Watkinsville resident, works for an insurance technology company and owns a gourmet olive oil store. He campaigned on improving health care, increasing affordability and reinvesting Georgia’s surplus funds
Guest is the president of a trucking company and touted his community ties, promising to improve public safety and cut taxes. He was endorsed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, an Athens native, and raised far more in campaign contributions than Gisler.
