Georgia's_10th_congressional_district_special_election,_2007

Georgia's 10th congressional district special election, 2007

On June 19, 2007, the U.S. state of Georgia held a special election to fill a vacancy in Georgia's 10th congressional district. A runoff was held on July 17 with Paul Broun defeating Jim Whitehead by a less than 1%.

History

The vacancy was created by the death of incumbent Republican Charlie Norwood. Norwood won reelection in 2006 with 67% of the vote.

Since this is a nonpartisan special election, all candidates for the election were listed alphabetically, though their party affiliations are noted on the ballot. According to Georgia law, to win outright, a candidate needed a majority vote; since no candidate won more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers competed in a runoff election on July 17 2007.

Official candidates

The following candidates were on the June 19 ballot. They are listed here alphabetically: first by party, then by name.

Democratic

Denise Freeman - Baptist minister and 1998/2000 Democratic nominee
James Marlow - Yahoo! Marketing executive
Evita Paschall - Attorney

Libertarian

Jim Sendelbach - Psychotherapist

Republican

Paul Broun - Physician
Bill Greene - Conservative activist
Mark Myers - Realtor & previous candidate
Nate Pulliam - Former soldier in the US Army & Realtor
Erik Underwood - Former Congressional Aide & Political consultant
Jim Whitehead - St. Senator, 2005-2007

Election Results

No candidate received a majority in the June 19 election so a runoff between Republicans Jim Whitehead and Paul Broun was held on July 17. Democrat James Marlow, the third place finisher, had the right to request a recount within 48 hours of the official certification of the election results on June 25, 2007, due to the very small difference in total votes for himself and Broun , but did not do so.

Because of the close vote total in the runoff, Whitehead also had the right to request a recount of the runoff result, but chose not to do so.

The official returns for the June 19 election and the July 17 run-off are:

Candidates		General Election, June 19		Run-Off Election, July 17
Candidate	Party	Votes	Percent	Votes	Percent
Jim Whitehead	Republican	23,555	43.51%	23,135	49.58%
Paul Broun	Republican	11,208	20.70%	23,529	50.42%
James Marlow	Democratic	11,010	20.34%
Denise Freeman	Democratic	2,574	4.76%
Evita Paschall	Democratic	1,778	3.28%
Bill Greene	Republican	1,635	3.02%
Nate Pulliam	Republican	913	1.69%
Jim Sendelbach	Libertarian	710	1.31%
Mark Myers	Republican	378	0.70%
Erik Underwood	Republican	376	0.70%