Health Care Downplayed in Georgia Special Election

Des­pite Demo­crats’ well-tele­graphed plans to make the House GOP’s health care bill an an­chor for Re­pub­lic­ans in 2018, the is­sue played a con­spicu­ously small role in Tues­day’s spe­cial elec­tion in Geor­gia.

Re­pub­lic­an Kar­en Han­del, who notched a nar­row vic­tory in the race to re­place Tom Price, Pres­id­ent Trump’s Health and Hu­man Ser­vices sec­ret­ary, did not make health care a cent­ral part of her cam­paign, and it was not the primary fo­cus of the mil­lions of dol­lars spent by Demo­crats in the elec­tion. A re­cent Wash­ing­ton Post Power­Post re­port noted that health care was ab­sent from the air­waves lead­ing up to the elec­tion.

Though Han­del hasn’t voted on the House GOP health care bill—an ad­vant­age her new GOP col­leagues won’t have in 2018—Demo­crats did not make an ef­fort to cap­it­al­ize on an is­sue they see as a huge vul­ner­ab­il­ity for the GOP in the 2018 midterms. (House Demo­crats taunted their GOP col­leagues, singing “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good­bye,” the day it was passed.)

Mean­while, Re­pub­lic­ans found suc­cess ty­ing Demo­crat Jon Os­soff to the policies of his own na­tion­al party lead­ers, even as they moved away from the re­peal-and-re­place man­tra they trot­ted out in the last four elec­tion cycles.

The lack of at­ten­tion to health care was sur­pris­ing giv­en that voters in the 6th Dis­trict lis­ted it as a ma­jor con­cern. A sur­vey by The At­lanta Journ­al-Con­sti­tu­tion taken be­fore the race found health care policy to be a top is­sue for 81 per­cent of voters. The same poll found just one-quarter of voters ap­proved of the House’s plan, known as the Amer­ic­an Health Care Act.

“If I was a Re­pub­lic­an lead­er I would say, ‘Our bill is not pop­u­lar but it’s not sink­ing our can­did­ates,’” said Robert Blendon, pro­fess­or of health policy and polit­ic­al ana­lys­is at Har­vard Uni­versity.

Geor­gia Re­pub­lic­an con­sult­ant Todd Rehm said it was smart for the Han­del cam­paign to down­play health care in the race, par­tic­u­larly while the is­sue re­mains un­settled on Cap­it­ol Hill.

“It’s hard to come out full-voiced in fa­vor of something that could be changed sig­ni­fic­antly next week,” Rehm said. He poin­ted out that after Han­del de­fen­ded the House bill in a tele­vised de­bate, Pres­id­ent Trump had made “less than fully en­thu­si­ast­ic re­marks” about the le­gis­la­tion.

Demo­crat­ic me­dia con­sult­ant John Row­ley said that the health care is­sue is “in a dra­mat­ic­ally bet­ter place for Demo­crats” but the party should heed les­sons learned in Geor­gia. In the fu­ture, he said, Demo­crats need to have a mes­sage that res­on­ates with voters, and not just rely on the fact that Trump is in the White House.

Rehm said Demo­crats suffered from their own lack of a co­hes­ive ap­proach to health care. The Os­soff cam­paign, he said, “couldn’t com­mit ideo­lo­gic­ally” on his own plans, which “pre­ven­ted him from hav­ing a clear, firm, and cent­ral po­s­i­tion on health care.”

But the GOP also has reas­on to worry. “Re­pub­lic­an lead­er­ship should be very nervous by the amount Os­soff was able to raise and the fact that the elec­tion res­ults were so close in a dis­trict they won by 20-plus points in the past,” said Row­ley.

Rehm said that Han­del’s close fin­ish, in a dis­trict Re­pub­lic­ans have eas­ily held for years, could also give rank-and-file mem­bers pause.

“If they take this win as a warn­ing, even in a heav­ily Re­pub­lic­an dis­trict, that a Demo­crat can come very, very close to win­ning, more vul­ner­able mem­bers are go­ing to as­sert some in­de­pend­ence from the caucus and the po­s­i­tion of the pres­id­ent,” he said.

Al­tern­at­ively, if Re­pub­lic­ans view this as a boost to the na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an pro­pos­als and to Trump, then it should be easi­er to “main­tain party dis­cip­line with the House caucus and keep those vul­ner­able mem­bers in line,” he said.

Re­pub­lic­ans on the Hill are not read­ing too much about health care in­to Han­del’s vic­tory.

House Free­dom Caucus Chair­man Mark Mead­ows said Han­del’s win does not ne­ces­sar­ily send a spe­cif­ic sig­nal on health care, but shows that “people are ser­i­ous about get­ting things done and do­ing it dif­fer­ently.”

Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Steve Stivers also cau­tioned against ana­lyz­ing this elec­tion for clues about health care and oth­er is­sues.

“I think people can read too much in­to that,” said Stivers. “I don’t want to say that this is some mes­sage on every is­sue. This is a mes­sage about who the people of Geor­gia wanted to rep­res­ent them.”