- Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux and Republican Rich McCormick are facing off in Georgia’s 7th congressional district.
- Georgia’s 7th Congressional District is home to northeastern Atlanta and eight smaller cities in Gwinett and Forsyth counties.
- The seat is open after Rep. Rob Woodall announced in February 2019 that he would not be seeking re-election.
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After losing by the thinnest of margins in 2018, Carolyn Bourdeaux takes on Dr. Rich McCormick in Georgia’s competitive 7th Congressional District.
The seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Rob Woodall who announced in February 2019 that he would not be seeking re-election for a sixth term.
The candidates
Bourdeaux, a Democrat, is a professor at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Public Policy in Atlanta. She temporarily left her teaching role during the Great Recession to become the director of Georgia’s Senate Budget and Evaluation Office.
The Republican candidate, McCormick, is an emergency room physician who won a contested Republican primary with seven candidates. In a July trip to Atlanta, President Donald Trump endorsed McCormick and called him “his friend,” according to reporting from the Gwinnett Daily Post.
The district
Georgia's 7th Congressional District is composed of the Northeastern region of Atlanta and includes the cities of Buford, Norcross, Cumming, Peachtree Corners, Duluth, Lawrenceville, Snellville, and Suwanee.
It includes parts of the rapidly-growing and Democratic-trending Gwinnett County along with a portion of Forsyth County, which has traditionally been reliably Republican.
The district was a conservative mainstay for 25 years, but the district's politics are rapidly shifting. In 2018, Republican Rep. Woodall narrowly retained his seat against Bourdeaux by just 433 votes.
Georgia's 7th, which is very similar to many of the diverse, suburban districts Democrats won back in the 2018 midterms, is a top target for Democrats to flip this year too.
Romney easily carried the district by nearly 22 points in 2012 while Trump won it by a much smaller margin of 6.3 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election and 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams carried it by 1.4 points while Woodall narrowly held onto the seat, according to the Daily Kos.
The money race:
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bourdeaux has raised $2.2 million, or twice the amount of McCormick, who has brought in $1.1 million so far. With over $750,000 on hand, Bourdeaux also has more available to spend than her opponent who only has $105,000 remaining.
What some of the experts say:
The race between Bourdeaux and McCormick is rated as a "toss-up" by Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, "tilts Democratic" by Inside Elections, and "leans Democratic" by The Cook Political Report.