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A 'Ghost' Ran for Congress in Georgia Before Jon Ossoff and Got Almost as Many Votes as Jon Ossoff. Meet Rodney Stooksbury
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Candidate
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Dec 14, 2019 11:14am |
| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Jun 28, 2017 02:15pm |
| Description | "Anti-Trump fervor" and more than $23 million weren't enough to turn Georgia's sixth congressional district blue for the first time in decades. As Republicans gloated about Democrat Jon Ossoff's loss to Karen Handel in the June 20 special election for a U.S. House seat, people latched on to a claim that Ossoff didn't even garner as many votes as the Democrat listed on the ballot during the general election last November. That was Rodney Stooksbury, who raised no money and had no campaign website or online presence. No one could find a photo of him, and as far as anyone could tell, he never even existed.
Last November, Stooksbury lost to Tom Price, who vacated the seat to become the health and human services secretary. During that election, people began to question why Stooksbury had such a nonexistent online footprint. The speculation has intensified since Ossoff's loss. "I've come to the conclusion that Tom Price's 'opponent' Rodney Stooksbury is not a real person and does not exist," wrote someone who presumably is real on Reddit the day after the special election. The next day, Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs magazine wrote that the mystery around Stooksbury is emblematic of wider issues within the Democratic Party: "The Rodney Stooksbury situation is only one small exemplar of larger problems in the party that have made them unable to take advantage of Donald Trump's unpopularity. They lack both a political strategy and actual likable candidates and are fumbling aimlessly in their attempts to resist."
"We were never able to find him," Heather Smith, a Democratic official in Dekalb County, Georgia, part of which lies in the sixth district, told me. "He's like a ghost.... It's absolutely concerning." |
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