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Graves, Hawkins battle today for US House seat
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New Holland precinct manager Alwayne Randolph, left, and Ruby Yarbrough set up electronic voting machines Monday afternoon at the East Hall library in preparation for today’s runoff election.

Runoff election
What: 9th District U.S. House seat vacated by Nathan Deal
When: Polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today

Election guide

Today’s the day to decide who will succeed former Rep. Nathan Deal in the U.S. House of Representatives, at least until December.

State lawmakers Tom Graves and Lee Hawkins will face off in a runoff of last month’s special election to fill Deal’s unexpired term, and voters will again see the two men’s names, along with others, on the ballot in the July 20 primary to fill the full term.

The 9th District stretches west across 15 counties, from Hall County to Dade County in the northwest corner of the state. The roughly 395,000 active registered voters in the district are largely conservative.

And the race to represent the district has largely been a contest to be the most conservative. In May’s special election to finish out the current term, Graves and Hawkins received the most votes of eight hopefuls, with Graves nabbing 35.4 percent of the vote and Hawkins, 23.2 percent.

Hawkins, a Gainesville dentist and a former state senator, is considered a more traditional conservative, while Graves, a real estate developer and former state representative who lives in Jasper, has garnered the support of local and national tea party groups, including the Washington, D.C.-based Club for Growth.

Much of today’s outcome will depend on who shows up to the polls. With Forsyth and Hall counties making up a large portion of the district’s population, turnout in those counties likely will heavily influence the election.

In May, Graves received 47 percent of the votes cast in Forsyth; Hawkins received 49 percent of the votes cast in his home county of Hall.

Even as runoff elections usually have substantially less interest than the initial election, Hall County voters have shown interest in this runoff, according to a local election official.

Already, 1,325 people voted early in Hall for today’s runoff election, and another 400 have mailed in ballots, Hall County Interim Elections Supervisor Charlotte Sosebee said.

Sosebee predicts 19 percent of the county’s active voters will have cast a vote by the time polls close at 7 p.m. today, based on the number of early voters.

About 18 percent of Hall County’s voters showed up in the initial special election in May.

Their support of Hawkins earned him a spot on the runoff ballot. And Graves’ campaign, which received broad support in May, took notice.

In the May election, Graves received more votes than Hawkins in 14 counties, won a majority of the votes in two counties and was the leading candidate in 11 counties.

In the four counties Graves didn’t lead, he came in second.

Such was the case in Hall County, but Tim Baker, a spokesman for Graves’ campaign, said the former state representative spent some of his final moments Monday campaigning in Hall County.

Graves attended a Rotary Club meeting in Gainesville after spending time on a local radio show Monday morning, and had plans to appear on a local northwest Georgia television station in the evening, Baker said.

Hawkins spent his final day before the runoff in Hall and White counties, but he said he spent much of the last month meeting with groups and media outlets in the western end of the district.

A win today, Hawkins said, would be a "vote of confidence" that would allow him to immediately start working in Congress.

But win or lose, Hawkins said he would continue to campaign for the full term.

"We will continue to campaign and work harder," Hawkins said.

Baker would not say whether a negative outcome today would affect Graves’ participation in the July primary.

"We’ll have to wait and see," Baker said. "We take one race at a time, and we are focused on (Tuesday)."