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Georgia emergency room physician Rich McCormick on Tuesday beat Donald Trump-backed attorney Jake Evans in a Republican runoff election that centered on the candidates challenging each other’s conservative values in a redrawn district.
In the Republican primary election, McCormick led Evans 43% to 23%. A runoff was triggered after neither candidate met the 50% threshold needed for an outright win.
The GOP-led General Assembly drew the 6th District with a heavy red tilt last year, making it all but certain that a Republican would win the general election in November.
RICH MCCORMICK AND TRUMP-BACKED EVANS HEAD TO GEORGIA GOP HOUSE RUNOFF IN ATLANTA AREA
The district is one of two open House seats in Georgia and includes east Cobb County, part of Cherokee County, north Fulton County, and all of Dawson and Forsyth counties.
The incumbent in the current configuration of the district, Rep. Lucy McBath, is running in the neighboring 7th Congressional District, where the odds are in her favor.
House Republicans need to win five seats in the 435-member chamber to win back the majority they lost in 2018.
The 6th District race garnered a lot of attention, and Evans pulled in impressive endorsements from the former president, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and the powerful Club For Growth political committee.
Evans was previously the chairman of the state ethics commission and touted his Trump endorsement every chance he got. His father, Randy Evans, was Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg.
In a Facebook video, Gingrich said Evans was the candidate to “get America back on track with solid, conservative ideas — balancing the budget, reforming welfare, [and] cutting taxes.”
“He’s young enough that he can grow into a real national leader,” Gingrich added.
McCormick, a former Marine helicopter pilot who narrowly lost a House race in 2020, was backed by the Club for Growth, which called him an “across-the-board conservative that will restore economic opportunity in America.”
During an Atlanta Press Club primary runoff debate, Evans and McCormick spent most of their time sounding off on who was the more conservative candidate and blasting the other for being fake.
“The fact of the matter is, Rich McCormick is an establishment RINO [Republican In Name Only],” Evans said, adding that most of McCormick’s endorsements are from moderates and that he has accepted donations from healthcare organizations like the American Medical Association, which Evans claimed is liberal.
McCormick turned the tables on Evans during the same debate and claimed the attacks were an attempt to distract the public from an essay Evans published in a 2015 law review which McCormick called a “manifesto” that shed light on Evans’s actual political bent.
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In the essay, Evans wrote about shifting public funding from criminal justice to education and defined institutional racism. McCormick alleged that Evans’s true beliefs run counter to his campaign’s core themes.
“We are sick of fake politicians who do or say anything to be elected,” McCormick said. “Fake politicians like Jake Evans.”
