Election night liveblogging from the Cagle party

jcfarris and I are at the Gwinnett Arena liveblogging from the Casey Cagle election night party. Nice: as bloggers, the campaign allows us to work out of the press suite. Not so nice: there was no Internet here. Thanks to the campaign and a tech from the Arena, as well as jcfarris, we've set up an access point so now we can blog and the rest of the media has Internet access.



Photos from the party will be posted here throughout the evening

People are starting to filter in now. The media are doing live blurbs, but other than that there's not a lot going on just now.

At 8:14pm, Cagle is leading Reed 55.6% to 44.4%. Of course, this is all completely meaningless right now, as only 4% of precincts are reporting.

The media coordinator just informed us that Cagle is here with his family in their suite. They'll let us know when he'll be out to talk.

8:27: Cagle will speak at 8:45. I suspect it may be carried live.
8:32: Cagle's mother just made the rounds in the press room- everyone seems upbeat.
10% of the precincts reporting in, CC is 14,861 vs RR at 12,423.

10:00: Reed just conceded on TV. The republic is saved.
8:39: 12% in, CC is 54%, RR is 45.3%. Reed is leading in Effingham, Early, Jenkins, Laurens, Madison, Oglethorpe, Peach, Stephens, Taylor, Telfair, and Wheeler counties. Note that the metro Atlanta counties that have reported results have Cagle in the lead. Karen Handel for Sec. of State has 40.7% of the vote and is in the lead- Bill Stephens is at 35%.

8:42: Cagle's family just took the stage.
Casey Cagle: Night is young, but "we are feeling good", "encouraged". Cagle is "humbled" and has "proven the pundits wrong". A quick statement to general applause. The stage is clearing now. No real news, just a quick statement.

9:23: Numbers finally coming in from Gwinnett. With 21/162, CC is 1,350 to RR 1,103.
update 21/162 refers to the number of precincts reporting out of the total amount.
Fun party- jcfarris and I are here at a table near the stage with a group of folks from Peach Pundit and Jasonpye.com. Good fun.

9:46: 39% in, Handel and Cagle are still holding their leads. Looks like Sec. of State will be a runoff for both the Democrats and Republicans. And *shock* *surprise*, WSB is calling the Republican governor race for Perdue. Apparently McBride has a party somewhere, I'd love to hear where it's at- that's got to be a scene.

9:52: In the 4th district, Hank Johnson has pulled ahead slightly over Cynthia "Poetic License" McKinney. HJ 49.1%, CM 41.7%. Unfortunately, John "Wingnut" Coyne is getting almost 10%, so it's extremely likely that he'll throw things to McKinney.

9:57: update
jcfarris is reporting over at Jasonpye.com that he's heard a rumor that Reed just called Cagle to concede. I don't know what to make of that (I think it's still way too early to concede), but the media pool did just fire up their equipment in front of the stage. We shall see.

10:00: Reed just conceded on TV. The republic is saved. There was much rejoicing here at the Gwinnett Arena.

10:11: Cagle has just taken the stage to speak. Opening speaker pointed out how other Lt. Gov. candidates jumped out of the race when Reed announced he was going to run, Cagle on the other hand decided he could do it.

10:13: Cagle takes the podium. Thanks God, his family, (insert standard boilerplate speech kudos here). I'm a cynical SOB, so I'll skip most of the standard speechifying.

10:16: Karen Handel is still at about 42% in the Sec. of State race with 58% of precincts reporting. There's going to be a runoff for sure. In the Democratic governor's race, Mark Taylor is leading at 51.5%, with Cathy Cox at 43.9%. There might actually not be a runoff in that race- IIRC, The Big Guy has been roughly over 50% most of the night.

10:20: Cagle still speaking, says Reed was gracious in his concession and offered his support in the primary election. Cagle gives a shoutout to Perdue for the gubernatorial race.

10:51: The rejoicing continues. heheher is on her way here from work, and I ran into operationpetty as well. 70% of precincts reporting. I think Mark Taylor has it without a runoff for the Democratic gubernatorial race. Karen Handel (R SofS) is still at about 42%, and on the Democratic side nobody has managed to even get 25% of the votes... there'll be a SoS runnoff across the board. This may not be a good thing for Handel, a moderate Republican. Interesting that Shyam Reddy on the Dem side is only polling at 17%, despite what many people told me about him running a strong race.

For Sec. of Education, we have Denise "voices in my head tell me what to do" Majette getting a clear win with 65% of the vote and Kathy "intelligent design" Cox getting the same percentage on the Republican side. I'll actually be voting for David Chastain, the Libertarian candidate, who is running on the actually intelligent platform that the Secretary of Education seat shouldn't be directly politicized by election, but should be either hired or appointed based on professional qualifications.

With 60% of precincts reporting in the 4th district, Cynthia McKinney has taken a slight lead: 46.7% to 45.3% for Hank Johnson. Excuse my language, but I think it's clear that the "F" in John F. Coyne stands for "f*cktard" because the 8% he's polling would be enough to give Johnson a win without a runoff. The 4th will go to a runoff, and I think Cynthia might be able to pull it off based on her ability to get people to the polls. We'll see how well Johnson can get his and Coyne's supporters to the polls in August.

11:23: I'm heading home. Amusing note: in Augusta (121st district), a state house race had a stepson facing off against his stepmother for the father's seat (the father died). The stepson is beating the snot out of the son right now.