The Nov. 6, 2018, election is casting a shadow over the Nov. 3, 2026, election.
In that 2018 election, voters in House District 121 rejected Democrat Jonathan Wallace, who won a special election in November of the previous year and had served only one legislative session, and replaced him with Republican Marcus Wiedower.
Last December, after Wiedower stepped down unexpectedly, Democrat Eric Gisler defeated Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest IV in a special election by 198 votes. Wallace’s winning gap had been 1,061 votes.
Gisler has said repeatedly that the District is gerrymandered to make it hard for a Democrat to win, though he said at his town Hall Meeting on Saturday that he was "feeling cautiously optimistic" that he will be able to prevail on Nov. 3.
Guest has labeled the Dec. 9 special election “an outlier” and has called himself “your next representative for District 121" in his Facebook posts.
An analysis of voting patterns in House District 121 going back to the 2017 special election shows that Wallace won in 2017 and lost in 2018 due to different turnout rates in the two elections in Oconee and Clarke counties, the two counties that contribute to House District 121.
Gisler won in 2025 with the same turnout rates in the two counties as in 2024 when he lost to Wiedower.
Gisler won in 2025 because, in a low turnout election, he managed to get a larger percentage of the votes in both counties in the race against Guest than he got in 2024 in the race against Wiedower.
The question now is a simple one: Can Gisler repeat that feat in an election that certainly will have a higher turnout than the December election had?
The Story Of 2017 Special Election
In August of 2017, Chuck Williams, a Republican, stepped down as representative of the 119th House District, which included most of Oconee County now in the 121st House District and many of the same southeastern parts of Clarke County now in the 121st House District.
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| Gisler Candidate Forum 9/24/2026 |
Gov. Nathan Deal called a special election for Nov. 7, in conjunction with the regular election on that date.
Special elections are held without a primary, and Jonathan Wallace ran as a Democrat while Thomas Lord, Steven Strickland, and Wiedower ran as Republicans.
The only races on the Nov. 7 ballot in Oconee County were for the 119th House District and for the 117th House District, where a special election also was underway to replace Regina Quick, who stepped down from that race.
Watkinsville had only a single contested race for Council, and that was the only other election in the county, albeit only within the city limits of Watkinsville.
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| Guest Candidate Forum 9/24/2026 |
In Clarke County, however, a Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST) referendum was on the ballot.
Wallace won the 2017 special election with 56.7 percent of the vote, consisting of 37.8 percent of the vote in Oconee County and 76.4 percent of the vote in Clarke County.
What made the election stand out is that 49.0 percent of the vote came from Clarke County, with the remaining 51.0 percent coming from Oconee County.
In simple terms, TSPLOST brought out Clarke County voters, who approved the sales tax.
What Happened Next
In 2018, Wiedower challenged Wallace, and Wiedower won with 52.8 percent of the vote overall.
In that election, 56.2 percent of the vote came Oconee County and 43.8 percent of the vote came from Clarke County. The gap in votes between the two counties shifted from 2.0 percent in favor Oconee County to 12.4 percent in favor of Oconee County in 2018.
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In 2020, Wallace challenged Wiedower, and Wiedower won again, this time with 54.9 percent of the vote. In that election, 57.0 percent of the votes came from Clarke County, with 43.0 coming from Clarke County.
In 2021, House District 119 was redistricted and renumbered to be House District 121. For Oconee County, that meant that what was then the Athens Academy Precinct, which had been in the 118th House District, moved to the new 121st House District.
The 118th House District became the 120th House District, with Oconee County playing more of a role in the new 121st House District and less of a role in the new 120th House District.
In 2022, when Democrat Jeff Auerbach challenged Wiedower in the new 121st House District, Wiedower won with 60.4 percent of the vote.
In that election, only 32.8 percent of the vote came from Clarke County, with 67.2 percent of the vote coming from Oconee County.
In 2024, Gisler challenged Wiedower, and Wiedower won with 61.1 percent of the vote.
In 2024, Clarke County contributed 33.2 percent of the vote, and Oconee County contributed 66.8 percent of the vote.
How Dec. 9 Differed
When Wiedower stepped down in late October of last year, Gov. Brian Kemp called a special election to replace him for Dec. 9.
Guest stepped forward as the only Republican candidate to run in the special election, which, again, was to be held without a primary.
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Gisler, who had already announced his intent to challenge Wiedower a second time in 2026, was the only Democrat to qualify for the special election in 2025.
Guest received 49.1 percent of the vote, to Gisler’s 50.9 percent.
The percentage of the vote coming from Clarke in the special election on Dec. 9 was 32.8. In 2024, Clarke County contributed 33.2 percent of the vote when Gisler lost to Wiedower. In 2022, when Auerback lost to Wiedower, Clarke County contributed 32.8 percent of the vote.
Gisler won in the December 2025 election not by increasing the Clarke County turnout relative to Oconee County, but by getting more of the vote both in Clarke County and in Oconee County than either he or Auerback did in 2024 or 2022.
In 2022, Auerbach got 67.0 percent of the vote in Clarke County. In 2024 Gisler got 64.7 percent of the vote in Clarke County.
In the Dec. 9 special election, Gisler got 82.3 percent of the vote in Clarke County.
In 2022, Auerback got 26.2 percent of the vote in Oconee County. In 2024 Gisler received 26.0 percent of the vote in Oconee County.
In the Dec. 9 special election, Gisler received 35.5 percent of the vote in Oconee County.
Gisler’s 82.3 percent of the vote in Clarke in 2025 was considerably better than Wallace’s 76.4 percent in Clarke County in the special election in 2017, and Gisler’s vote in Oconee County of 35.5 percent in 2025 was close to Wallace’s 37.8 percent in Oconee County in 2017.
Other Considerations
When Williams stepped down in House District 119, three Republicans entered the 2017 special election, Tom Lord, Steven Strickland, and Wiedower. All were from Oconee County.
Wallace won that special election against a divided field, which led Republicans in December of 2025 to consolidate their support around Guest.
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| Guest Town Hall 9/17/2026 |
Gisler did nearly as well in Oconee County and better in Clarke County than Wallace did against that single candidate, who had been designed, unofficially, as the candidate supported by the Party.
The December special election also followed a November election in which 41.2 percent of Oconee County voters selected a Democrat in the Public Service Commission District 2 race and 41.8 selected a Democrat in Public Service Commission 3 race.
The votes for Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard topped the recent record Democratic vote in the county recorded by Sen. Raphael Warnock in the December 2022 runoff of 32.7 percent.
In Clarke County in those races, 83.5 percent of the voters picked a Democrat in the Public Service Commission District 2 (Johnson) race, and 84.4 percent picked a Democrat (Hubbard) in the Public Service Commission 3 race.
Extrapolating To 2026
The difficulty in extrapolating from those special Public Service Commission races to Nov. 3 of 2026 is that only 8,120 Oconee County voters cast a ballot in the District 2 race and only 8,105 cast a ballot in the District 3 race.
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| Gisler Town Hall 10/24/2026 |
And that same problem presents itself in extrapolating from the Dec. 9 special election to the current contest between Gisler and Guest.
Only 7,765 voters cast a ballot in Oconee County in that race, and only 3,785 cast a ballot in Clarke County.
In the 2024 House District 121 race, 21,586 voters from Clarke County cast a ballot, and 10,745 from Clarke County cast a ballot.
Turnout this year is likely to be similar.
Gisler won in a different way in December of 2025 than Wallace won in November of 2017.
Whether Gisler can win in that different way again–by getting a larger percentage of votes in both Oconee and Clarke counties with a much larger turnout, will only be answered on Nov. 3.
Until then, the cloud from 2018 remains overhead.
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