Georgia Democrat Leads the Pack in Closely-Watched Special Election

That's enabled him not just to blanket the airwaves but to also build a massive field operation that has many Republicans rightly anxious.

"I don't care what party you're from", said Marty Aftewicz, a 66-year-old Republican voter from Marietta. Leaders from both parties will be free to openly pick sides, and a new burst of national money and attention will flood the district.

Democrats in the area, though, see the flood of donations as a sign they're not alone in opposing the president. Mike Pompeo, whose seat Estes filled when Pompeo became director of the Central Intelligence Agency, won his election in November by 31 points. Mr Ossoff, who lives just outside the district - another detail his foes are latching onto - argues that it is precisely because of a sour taste left behind by the campaign of President Donald Trump past year that so many people are responding to his message today even in a district that has for so always been dominated by Republicans.

Hollywood has even come out for the off-cycle vote, with actor Samuel L. Jackson cutting a radio ad urging voters to flip the seat once held by Republican Tom Price, who is now Trump's health secretary. But more Americans think Democrats would do a better job on a number of other issues, including some that were previously GOP strengths. Two independent candidates also are running.

Trump said in a Sunday tweet that last week's special election in Kansas was a "really big media event" until a Republican won the contest.

Ron Estes, the Republican state treasurer in Kansas, defeated Democrat James Thompson to win the seat. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a political action committee backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, has plunked more than $2 million into Ossoff attacks, an impressive sum but only about a quarter of the Democrat's campaign haul.

Despite Trump's call of action against Ossoff, the White House may not be too anxious that a Democrat would take the congressional seat.

The closely watched contest has drawn national attention as the first political bellwether of the Trump era, after the district almost split its vote between the Republican leader and Hillary Clinton in last year's presidential election. But which Republican do you think makes it into the runoff with him (if there is one)?

The message sank in for Aftewicz, who cast an early ballot for Republican candidate Dan Moody. "Stop Donald Trump, the man who encourages racial and religious discrimination and sexism", Jackson says in the Ossof campaign ad. Though he's well-funded and well ahead in the polls, Ossoff is competing with more than a dozen other hopefuls, making a clear majority likely impossible. And he defends his campaign as a grassroots success powered by small and medium donors. Galloway said that he would be "mildly surprised" if Ossoff won outright on Tuesday. That leaves 11 Republican candidates hoping the investigative filmmaker fails to reach a majority. If no one secures 50%, then the top two go to a run-off vote.

In 2016, Arkansas Democrats didn't field candidates in the state's 1st, 3rd or 4th congressional districts. Yet that's considerably different from Trump's charge that Ossoff wants to "allow illegal immigration".