A 49-year-old Democrat who owns a gourmet olive oil store is wresting another historically Republican district from Trump and the Republicans.
Democrat Eric Gisler claimed a surprise victory Tuesday in a special election in a historically Republican district in the state of Georgia.
Gisler declared himself the winner of the contest, in which he led Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest by about 200 votes out of more than 11,000 in unofficial final results.
Robert Sinners, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said there could be a few provisional ballots remaining before the count is finalized.
“I think we had the right message for the times,” Gisler told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He attributed his victory to Democratic enthusiasm, but also said some Republicans were seeking change.
“A lot of what I would call traditional conservatives held their noses and voted Republican last year on the promise of low prices and whatever they were selling,” Gisler said. “But they hadn’t received it.”
The guest did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment Tuesday evening.
Democrats have enjoyed a number of electoral successes in 2025, with the party’s voters eager to express their displeasure with Republican President Donald Trump.
In Georgia in November, they went on a rampage in a statewide special election for the Public Service Commission, unseating two Republican incumbents in campaigns driven by discontent over rising electricity costs.
Nationally, Democrats won gubernatorial elections by wide margins in Virginia and New Jersey. A Democrat beat a Trump-backed Republican in the officially nonpartisan race for Miami mayor on Tuesday, becoming the first member of his party to win the office in nearly 30 years.
Democrats also performed well in some races they lost, like the Tennessee House race last week and the Georgia state Senate race in September.
Republicans remain firmly in control of the Georgia House, but their majority is expected to fall to 99-81 when lawmakers return in January. Also Tuesday, voters in a largely Republican second 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 Republican majority is down from 119 Republicans in 2015. It would be the first time the Republican Party has held fewer than 100 seats in the lower house since 2005, when it took control for the first time since Reconstruction.
The race between Gisler and Guest in Athens-area District 121, northeast of Atlanta, was to replace Republican Marcus Wiedower, who held the seat since 2018 but resigned midway through this term to focus on business interests.
Most of the district is in Oconee County, a Republican suburb of Athens, reaching into the heavily Democratic Athens-Clarke County. Republicans consolidated Athens-Clarke to include a heavily Democratic district, dividing the rest of the county into three supposedly Republican seats.
Gisler ran against Wiedower in 2024, losing 61% to 39%. This year was Guest’s first time running for office.
A Democrat briefly took 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 president of a trucking company and has touted his ties to the community, promising to improve public safety and reduce taxes. He was endorsed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, an Athens native, and raised far more campaign contributions than Gisler.
