Biden and Harris will head to Georgia to rally
turnout in high-stakes Senate races.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/30/us/biden-trump
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will campaign in
Atlanta on Monday — the same day President Trump will hold a rally in Dalton,
Ga. — as Democrats and Republicans engage in last-minute battling to increase
votes in the state’s two high-stakes Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Vice
President-elect Kamala Harris is also headed to Georgia in a final attempt to
garner votes for the two Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and the Rev.
Raphael Warnock, in an election that will determine control of the Senate and
possibly the success of Mr. Biden’s presidency.
Ms. Harris
is scheduled to hold a rally on Sunday in Savannah, Mr. Warnock’s childhood
hometown and an area where Democrats are hoping to increase voter turnout.
The planned
appearances by the leaders of the two parties emphasized the pivotal importance
of the outcomes of the races. The election of both Democratic challengers would
split the Senate 50 to 50, with Ms. Harris holding the tiebreaking vote, giving
Mr. Biden a better chance to advance his legislative agenda.
The
Republican incumbents, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are hoping for
a lift from Mr. Trump’s scheduled visit but have repeatedly been placed in
awkward situations by the president, who has refused to accept his election
loss in the state and created rifts among Republican officials there. On
Twitter on Wednesday, he said that Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp,
should resign, calling him “an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won
Georgia, BIG!”
Mr. Kemp,
speaking to reporters in Atlanta on Wednesday at a hastily convened news
conference, did not address Mr. Trump’s comments directly, saying he would not
get “distracted” from his goal of electing Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler. He also
said he was too focused on responding to the pandemic to get involved in
political infighting.
“That horse
has left the barn in Georgia,” Mr. Kemp said in reference to Mr. Biden’s win in
Georgia — dismissing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the state’s election was
tainted by fraud.
With voter
turnout already at record levels in the close election, all the campaigns have
been concentrating on spurring every last supporter to the polls.
In a new ad
released by the Ossoff campaign on Wednesday, former President Barack Obama
tells Georgians that Mr. Ossoff would pass a new voting rights act, urging,
“Georgia, you have the power, and now it’s time to vote.” The ad’s musical
backdrop is John Legend’s rendition of “Georgia on My Mind.”
The precise
details of the visits by Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris were not announced, and it
was not clear whether Mr. Biden’s rally on Monday would coincide with the
appearance by Mr. Trump on Monday night in Dalton, a carpet manufacturing hub
in a heavily Republican area of the state.
Mr. Biden last
appeared in the state on Dec. 15, the start of early voting in Georgia,
thanking residents for his Nov. 3 victory in the state and urging them to “do
it again,” characterizing the Senate’s Republican control as a “roadblock” to
progress.
Ms. Harris
and Vice President Mike Pence also campaigned in Georgia in December.
Mr. Trump
will also be making a return appearance in his Monday rally. He campaigned for
the two Republicans in Valdosta, Ga., on Dec. 5 in a rally that turned out be
more of a public grievance session focusing on his own defeat than an
endorsement of the two incumbents.
Mr. Trump
lost the state by about 12,000 votes to Mr. Biden, an outcome that has been
borne out by two recounts requested by the Trump campaign and a signature-match
audit of absentee ballots.
In a
statement on Tuesday announcing the outcome of the signature audit, Georgia’s
Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said the audit found “no
fraudulent absentee ballots,” adding that it “disproves” Mr. Trump’s claims of
election fraud.
— Stephanie Saul and Glenn Thrush
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