After falling short in the most expensive campaign in U.S. House history last year, Democrat Jon Ossoff announced Friday he will not seek the 6th Congressional District seat in Georgia in 2018.
Ossoff, defeated by Republican Karen Handel in a special election runoff last June for the seat that includes East Cobb, said on his Twitter account this afternoon that he will not be making another challenge.
In a series of Tweets Ossoff said that “I’ve decided that this is not the moment for me to run again for Congress. But I’m not going anywhere. Your trust, energy, and support last year meant the world to me. I’m in this with all of you for the long haul.”
Ossoff said he is continuing his work as an investigative documentary filmmaker but that “I’ll be actively supporting great Democratic candidates in 2018.”
Qualifying for 2018 elections in Georgia begins March 5, with primaries scheduled for May 22 for federal, state and local races.
Ossoff, a former Congressional aide from DeKalb County, earned nationwide attention and raised nearly $30 million in his bid to succeed former U.S. Rep. Tom Price in a seat that has been in Republican hands since Newt Gingrich’s arrival in 1978.
He won a “jungle primary” last April with 48 percent of the vote, barely missing outright election in what would have been a major upset. Instead, he faced Handel, a former Georgia Secretary of State and candidate for governor and U.S. Senator, in a two-month runoff.
He used much of his campaign funding for television commercials that flooded Atlanta airwaves for months, as well as frequent mailers, phone calls and text messages and door-to-door leafletting.
In her ads, Handel, who’s from Roswell, made frequent reference to Ossoff’s residence in DeKalb County, outside the 6th District boundaries.
She got a strong showing from heavily Republican precincts in East Cobb to defeat Ossoff 51-48 for the right to fill the remainder of Price’s term. He vacated the seat after the 2016 election to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services,but was forced to resign in September after reports that he spent several hundred thousand dollars at taxpayers’ expense flying charter planes, sometimes for personal as well as government reasons.
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