In Coastal Georgia’s most closely watched primary runoff, incumbent Steven Sainz has narrowly defeated Glenn Cook for the Republican nomination for Georgia House District 180 in a contest highlighted by the expanding role of outside groups in the region’s elections.
Sainz defeated Cook, a lawyer and retired U.S. Navy and Delta Airlines pilot, with approximately 52.4% of the vote, according to unofficial tallies posted by the secretary of state’s office.
The 29-year-old social service entrepreneur eked out victory after enjoying a more than 6-to-1 fundraising advantage and the backing of longtime Camden County Republican and business leaders, as well as GOP leaders in Atlanta.
As expected, voter turnout for the runoff was low. Only 4,370 voters cast ballots in the race, compared to 6,188 voters in last month’s general primary, according to the unofficial results.
The 29-year-old Sainz, a social service entrepreneur from Woodbine, now faces Democrat Defonsio Daniels in the November general election in which he’ll be the heavy favorite to win a fourth, two-year term representing District 180, which covers Camden County and part of Glynn, including Jekyll Island. No Democrat has held the state House of Representatives seat this century.
Sainz entered the May primary as a clear favorite. Since winning the GOP nomination from three-term incumbent Jason Spencer in 2018, he has faced primary and general election opposition only once.
But the 67-year-old Cook and another challenger, David Rainer, split voters in a three-way Republican primary race. That caused Sainz to fall some 20 votes short of exceeding the 50% threshold needed to win the primary outright.That failure triggered Tuesday’s runoff with Cook, the second-place finisher.
As of April 30, the Committee to Elect Steven Sainz had contributions totaling $358,372 to Cook’s $55,993, according to documents filed with the state’s campaign commission. Most of the 216 contributions on record come from industry groups political and social causes that shape how legislative business is carried out in Atlanta.
Struggling through the tightest primary of Sainz’s brief political career, his campaign spent nearly $144,000 in the campaign’s final weeks to stave off an upset. Outside groups waded in, too, spending at least $44,000 to fund phone banks and flier printing and distribution.
Sainz took a high road, championing himself as a champion of “Camden County and Coastal Georgia values,” and the race’s true conservative.
Meanwhile, underscoring their expanding role in Coastal Georgia elections, the outside groups or “non-candidate committees” depicted Cook, a resident of the Glynn County portion of District 180, as an Atlanta-oriented outsider to Camden County.
They flooded the district with fliers depicting Cook, a self-described “Reagan Republican,” as insufficiently conservative and Republican, as well as an “Atlanta liberal” who wouldn’t fight to protect the nation’s borders and a “friend” of former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
For his part, Cook, a lawyer who resides on Jekyll Island, argued that Sainz’ incumbency and ties to Camden County’s tight-knit network of political and business leaders had made him a careless, inattentive lawmaker who does only what House Republican leaders tell him to do.
“He’s a backbencher that raises his hand when they need a vote. And they’re going all out for him,” he told The Current in an interview last week.
But the onslaught by outside groups backing Sainz put Cook, who described himself as a “Reagan Republican,” on the defensive.
It forced him to spend time explaining how Georgia state lawmakers have little impact on immigration policy — largely a federal matter — and to deny that he’d ever met Abrams or communicated with her.
All results are unofficial until certified.
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