Democrat Eric Gisler declared victory Tuesday night in a closely watched special election for a Georgia state House seat long held by Republicans, saying he beat GOP candidate Mack “Dutch” Guest by roughly 200 votes in final unofficial results.
Gisler said he was the winner in House District 121 after earning a narrow edge in a contest that saw more than 11,000 ballots cast. Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, told the Associated Press a few provisional ballots were still outstanding before the tally becomes final. Guest did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
The Athens-area district opened earlier this year when Republican Marcus Wiedower stepped down midterm to focus on his business interests. The seat has been reliably conservative, stretching across Republican-leaning Oconee County and into parts of Democratic Athens-Clarke County. Republicans redrew the district in recent years to solidify GOP control by concentrating Athens-Clarke’s Democratic voters elsewhere.
Gisler previously ran against Wiedower in 2024 and lost 61 percent to 39 percent. Guest, president of a trucking company, was a first-time candidate. He ran with the backing of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and promised to cut taxes, improve public safety and leverage his community ties. Gisler, who works for an insurance technology startup and owns a gourmet grocery store, campaigned on expanding health care access, improving affordability and reinvesting the state’s surplus funds.
A Democrat briefly held the seat after a 2017 special election but lost to Wiedower the following year.
If Gisler’s lead holds, Republicans will still control the Georgia House, but with a slimmer margin when lawmakers return in January. The GOP majority is expected to fall to 99 to 81, a sharp drop from 2015 when Republicans held 119 seats. It would also mark the first time since 2005 that the party controls fewer than 100 seats in the chamber.
Democrats have notched a string of electoral gains in 2025 as their voters express frustration with President Donald Trump. In Georgia, they cruised to two statewide wins for the Public Service Commission in November, unseating Republican incumbents amid anger over rising electricity costs. Nationally, Democrats won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey by wide margins, and on Tuesday captured the Miami mayor’s office for the first time in nearly three decades.
Even in contests they lost, Democrats have posted stronger showings, including a Tennessee U.S. House race last week and a Georgia state Senate race in September.
In another Georgia contest Tuesday, voters in a heavily Republican district in Atlanta’s northwest suburbs sent Republican Bill Fincher and Democrat Scott Sanders to a January 6 runoff to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Mandi Ballinger.
