Early Voting Numbers in Georgia Senate Races Put
G.O.P. on Edge
While polls suggest that the state’s crucial runoff
elections are up for grabs, Republicans have grown worried about strong turnout
in Democratic areas and mixed messages from President Trump.
By Astead
W. Herndon and Richard Fausset
Dec. 30,
2020, 5:54 p.m. ET
MACON, Ga.
— Senator Kelly Loeffler issued a now-familiar warning during a campaign event
on Wednesday in Bibb County: If Democrats win the Georgia Senate runoff
elections, there will be little left to stem a rising tide of extremist
socialism in America.
But Dale
Washburn, a Republican state legislator who introduced Ms. Loeffler at the
event, had another warning. This one was based not on ideology, but on numbers
that suggest Democrats are outpacing Republicans in early voting turnout —
which means that Republicans may need a tremendous election-day performance on
Jan. 5 if they are to win the state’s two high-stakes runoff races and maintain
control of the Senate.
“We’re
fully aware of the energy on the other side, and think we’ve been reminded
about that,” Mr. Washburn said. “We know demographics have changed in recent
years. And if our side hasn’t been aware of that, they’re rapidly becoming
aware of that. The Biden victory had a big part.”
Less than a
week before election day, the last-minute challenges, messages and strategies
for the two parties in Georgia’s runoffs are coming into focus, even as polls
indicate that the elections are too close to call. Those messages will be
hammered home on the day before the elections by President-elect Joseph R.
Biden Jr., who plans to campaign on Monday in Atlanta, and by President Trump,
who will hold a rally on the same day in Dalton, a city in northwest Georgia.
However,
some Republicans are increasingly worried that Mr. Trump, who continues to make
the baseless claim that he lost Georgia because of a rigged voting system, is
sending confusing signals to his followers that may serve to keep them home on
election day. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump on Twitter pushed for the resignation of
Gov. Brian Kemp, a staunch conservative and Trump supporter who has declined to
take steps to overturn the state’s election results.
The
president argued that Mr. Kemp was an “obstructionist who refuses to admit that
we won Georgia.”
As Mr.
Trump continues to foment a backward-looking drama, Ms. Loeffler and her fellow
Republican candidate, Senator David Perdue, have crisscrossed the state,
warning of an ominous future if their Democratic opponents, the Rev. Raphael G.
Warnock and Jon Ossoff, prevail. Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, Mr. Perdue
said the Republicans were a “last line of defense” against centralized
government, comparing his struggle to military conflicts like World War II.
On “Fox
& Friends” on Wednesday morning, he added: “We’re winning this race right
now. Kelly and I are all over this state. We’re running against two of the most
liberal candidates that the Democrats have ever put up.”
Democrats,
for their part, have been crafting messages that they hope will resonate with
African-Americans, a constituency crucial to Mr. Biden’s narrow victory in
Georgia in November. One TV ad released on Wednesday for Mr. Ossoff featured
former President Barack Obama, who says that Mr. Ossoff will pass a new voting
rights act if elected, while the musician John Legend plays a rendition of
“Georgia on My Mind.”
But it is
the numbers from early in-person and absentee voting that are particularly
troubling for many Republican operatives in the state. Since the start of early
voting on Dec. 14, more than 2.5 million Georgians have cast their votes, and
the breakdown appears to be mostly good news for Democrats. (The early voting
period runs through the end of Jan. 1, but Georgia counties may choose to close
polling sites in observance of holidays on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.)
The
breakdown of votes so far shows that vote-rich Democratic strongholds,
including Fulton and DeKalb Counties in metropolitan Atlanta, are posting high
numbers, while African-Americans statewide are “voting their weight and then
some,” said Charles S. Bullock III, a political scientist at the University of
Georgia.
At the same
time, Dr. Bullock noted, turnout has been weak in the northwestern part of the
state, which is home to many working-class white Trump supporters. In Walker
County, which Mr. Trump won with 79 percent of the vote, the turnout, as of
Wednesday, was only 47 percent of the general election total, according to the
website georgiavotes.com.
That may
explain Mr. Trump’s decision to hold his rally on Monday in Dalton, a city
known for its flooring and carpet manufacturing. It is also in the heart of the
congressional district recently won by Representative-elect Marjorie Taylor
Greene, the Republican best known for espousing elements of the QAnon
conspiracy theory.
Mr. Trump
announced the rally on Dec. 19. Democrats countered on Wednesday with their
announcement that Mr. Biden would campaign on the same day in Atlanta. On
Sunday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also plans to hold an event in
Savannah.
Ms.
Harris’s visit will most likely serve as a force multiplier for Democrats in
Savannah, with a leading Black Democrat visiting a predominantly Black city to
stump for Mr. Warnock, who is also Black and is a Savannah native. The move
demonstrates how Democrats have embraced a strategy espoused by Stacey Abrams,
the party’s former candidate for governor, that emphasizes paying attention to,
and spending money turning out, the state’s minority voters.
While that
strategy appears to have given Democrats an early edge, it remains to be seen
if it will be enough to counter a surge of Republican voters who are probably
waiting until election day to turn up at the polls, as has traditionally been
the case.
“Democrats
have shown up for the early vote, and the overt emphasis on Black voters has
seemingly paid off,” Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist based in Georgia,
said in a text message on Wednesday. “Republicans, though, still have a lot of
votes out there they can get, particularly in northwest Georgia, where Trump is
going Monday. The G.O.P. candidates will win handily among election day voters,
so the bigger the turnout on Tuesday, the better the Republican chances.”
But
Republicans had similar hopes for Mr. Trump in the general election, in which
he fell short by about 12,000 votes in Georgia. And it is unclear whether Mr.
Trump, in his visit to Dalton, will end up motivating his followers or causing
more headaches for Republicans.
Mr. Trump’s
tweet calling for Mr. Kemp to resign was already commanding some of the
political spotlight on Wednesday. At a hastily convened news conference, Mr.
Kemp did not address Mr. Trump’s comments directly, saying he would not be
“distracted” from his goal of electing Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler. The
governor also said he was too focused on responding to the coronavirus pandemic
to become involved in political infighting.
“That horse
has left the barn in Georgia,” Mr. Kemp said of Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia
— dismissing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the state’s election was tainted by
fraud.
How the
jockeying plays out will not only affect the balance of power in Washington but
also offer the first hints at how both parties navigate the post-Trump
political future. Mr. Trump has proved to be a unique motivator of the
Republican base, and the party is yet to find a figure who is equally adept at
maximizing turnout among white conservatives.
Democrats
are eager to prove that Mr. Biden’s success in November was not a fluke, and
that voters want a robust liberal agenda rather than the Republican-led
obstructionism that defined Mr. Obama’s administration.
Mr. Ossoff,
who is facing off against Mr. Perdue, has sought in particular to make the
election a referendum on Republican inaction on the pandemic. The latest issue
at hand this week was whether the Republican senators would support a Senate
vote on giving Americans stimulus checks of $2,000 rather than $600, a prospect
that Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, appeared to dash on
Wednesday.
“People are
in dire straits,” Mr. Ossoff said. “And if Senators Perdue and Loeffler — who
are in the majority, and, let’s be clear, it’s the majority that controls floor
action — and if they are serious about $2,000 relief checks for the people,
then they should put maximum pressure on Mitch McConnell to move that
legislation immediately.”
In a gaggle
at her event in Macon, Ms. Loeffler avoided the question. Though she has said she
supports the increased stimulus checks, she avoided placing pressure on Senate
Republican leaders to bring forth the issue on the floor without caveats. Ms.
Loeffler also avoided another hot-button Republican issue: whether to object to
the presidential results on Jan. 6, when the Senate must ratify the Electoral
College outcome.
“Leader
McConnell and I have spoken about bringing another relief package,” Ms.
Loeffler said. “But we’re in this situation because Democrats have blocked
relief throughout this summer.”
Her
carefully chosen words highlighted her current political pickle. In both
Georgia and Washington, siding with Mr. Trump can also mean being in direct
opposition to Republicans like Mr. McConnell or Mr. Kemp.
Mr.
Washburn, the state representative, said the infighting among Republicans had
made operating in the state more difficult.
He said he
worried that the discord, and the Republicans who have questioned whether their
votes will count in the runoffs, were hampering turnout for the party.
“Obviously
we would prefer to have complete unity, but the situation is what it is,” Mr.
Washburn said. “And we have to tap down any conversation that your vote doesn’t
matter. Because it does matter.”
He added,
“It’s definitely a big concern.”
Astead W.
Herndon is a national political reporter based in New York. He was previously a
Washington-based political reporter and a City Hall reporter for The Boston
Globe. @AsteadWesley
Richard
Fausset is a correspondent based in Atlanta. He mainly writes about the
American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal
justice. He previously worked at the Los Angeles Times, including as a foreign
correspondent in Mexico City. @RichardFausset
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