In early August, I wrote a post asking if Lucy McBath, the Democratic nominee for Georgia’s sixth House District, was the new religious star of the Democratic Party.

She had a compelling life story about losing her 17-year-old son, Jordan, to gun violence in 2012 and she used her grief to become a national spokeswoman for gun control. Then she decided to run for office against a heavily favored Republican incumbent, Rep. Karen Handel.

So I wrote about how McBath’s deeply Christian faith has been a guiding factor in her decision to run and how every media outlet except Mother Jones ignored that factor. When I went to bed Tuesday night, it appeared that McBath had lost.

When I woke up Wednesday, McBath had pulled ahead, finally winning in an election that took a day and one-half to decide. Handel finally conceded last Thursday morning after McBath bested her by less than 3,000 votes. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said:

The 6th District race was Georgia’s most high-profile upset in a year that drew near presidential-level turnout. Until a few weeks ago — and even leading into election night — many political handicappers did not list Handel among the lawmakers most in danger of losing their seats.
But sky-high turnout sparked by the state’s marquee gubernatorial race, simmering suburban dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and major outside assistance from groups linked to mega-donor Michael Bloomberg all helped McBath eke out a win over Handel, allies of the Democrat said in interviews this week.
But the McBath campaign and its allies also attribute the Democrat’s win to the candidate’s powerful personal story, which they say helped her cut through the political noise and connect with voters.

Her powerful story? That sounds like a potential opening to the faith factor in this story — if a journalist was willing to dig into that.

However, it is clear that gun control was the winning factor in this campaign.

Unless you live in Georgia, you probably don’t know who Lucy McBath is. Yet, she is the Democratic nominee for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, facing incumbent Karen Handel.

On July 24, she beat another Democrat to be the party's nominee. She has an appealing story and several publications have tried to tell it. But only one mentioned her faith, and that was Mother Jones.

When CNN did a piece on her, there was no mention of her faith. Neither did the Washington Post nor did the Atlantic. So here’s what Mother Jones ran.

On a Friday morning in December, a freak storm has sent snow billowing down the wide streets of Marietta, Georgia. But despite icy roads and an accident-related traffic jam near her house, Lucy McBath comes walking through the ’50s-style double doors of the Marietta Diner, a smile spread across her face.

As she settles into a booth beneath Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling, it’s clear no storm will stop her. “I have 100 percent security in the fact that God will lead me where I need to be,” she tells me. “I will continue to go through any door that he opens for me because that will allow me to make the best and the most important impact for serving people.”

The past five years of McBath’s life have been a series of doors opened by a terrible tragedy. The day after Thanksgiving in 2012, her 17-year-old son was shot while sitting in a car with a group of friends at a gas station following a dispute with another driver over the volume of the teens’ music. The gunman, a 45-year-old white man named Michael Dunn, fired 10 shots at the teenagers. Jordan Davis was hit three times. His best friend tried to pull him away from the gunfire, but Jordan’s body just fell into his lap. He died at the scene.

The teens were black, and the shooting happened nine months after another black teen, Trayvon Martin, was gunned down by neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman, causing national outrage. The week after Jordan’s death, McBath’s ex-husband got a text from Trayvon’s father: “I just want to welcome you to a club that none of us want to be in.”

A deeply religious woman, McBath spent the next year seeking justice for the son she had named for a biblical crossing of the Jordan River.

What’s fascinating about this woman is how her grief helped her to become a national spokeswoman against gun violence. In 2015, she appeared in a documentary co-starring a conservative evangelical Protestant minister.