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Former President Barack Obama campaigns in Atlanta less than 24 hours before polls open in Georgia.
Credit: Stephen Fowler | GPB News
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Aided By Obama, Georgia Democrats Set Sights On Both U.S. Senate Seats
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Less than 24 hours before polls were set to open on Election Day, former President Barack Obama found himself in a state he did not expect to visit as Democrats saw a state of play that could flip both U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, which has voted for Republican presidential candidates since 1996.
Standing at the base of Atlanta's 1996 Olympic cauldron in front of a hundred or so honking cars, Obama said Georgia had too much at stake to not visit.
"When I got a call that said 'Look, the state of Georgia could be the place where we put this country back on track, and not just because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have the chance to win Georgia — but you got the chance to flip two Senate seats,'" he said. "I said, 'Well, I gotta go. I gotta come.'"
The former president joined a litany of Democratic heavy-hitters to exhort Georgians to vote if they have not already, including a musical performance from hip-hop artist 2 Chainz, speeches from metro Atlanta congressional candidates and a personal story from Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a contender on Joe Biden's vice presidential shortlist before he selected Sen. Harris as his running mate.
"Too often, the small voice we hear is the one that we allow to whisper to ourselves, 'Do I even matter?' ... and I am reminded that we have a voice and it’s our vote,” Bottoms said. "But we can only do that by electing leaders who keep our communities on their minds and in their hearts, leaders like Lucy McBath, Carolyn Bourdeaux, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock."
In the regularly scheduled Senate contest, Ossoff is challenging Sen. David Perdue, a longtime business executive who has campaigned on a platform of economic growth and stopping "socialism." In recent weeks, Perdue has come under fire for mispronouncing Harris' name at a Trump rally in Macon and a more vocal alignment with President Trump's behaviors and policies.
"He's already proven that he deserves a second term," Perdue said at a Sunday night rally in Rome. "If you look at the contrast between Trump and Joe Biden, it's ridiculous that we're sitting here having this conversation!"
Polls show the race deadlocked, and the presence of a Libertarian candidate, Shane Hazel, could force the race to a runoff. Ossoff, an investigative documentary filmmaker, has attacked Perdue as the epitome of Washington corruption who used his position to profit off of the COVID-19 pandemic, something Perdue denies.
"Make a plan to vote tomorrow, call your friends, your neighbors, your cousins, your colleagues ... from Bankhead to Buckhead, from the coast to Columbus, from the mountains to the Florida line, make a plan to vote," Ossoff said. "It's time to restore the soul of this nation, it's time to send David Perdue into retirement."
Georgia's other Senate seat is up as a special election to fill the remainder of Sen. Johnny Isakson's term that ends in 2022 after the longtime lawmaker resigned last year. The format of the race will pit 20 candidates of all parties together on the same ballot, and if no candidate clears 50% the top two regardless of party also advance to a Jan. 5 runoff.
The incumbent, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp as a self-funder who could appeal to moderate, suburban women that have fled the Republican Party in the last four years. But another prominent Republican, Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville, has turned the battle for Republican votes into a bitter brawl for who is more conservative.
Loeffler was embroiled in controversy early in her time on Capitol Hill before most voters were introduced to her after news reports showed several stock trades the wealthy financial services executive made in the days and weeks following a private briefing on the coronavirus pandemic. Though regulators and ethics officials found no wrongdoing, the cloud over her background allowed Collins to position himself as a true defender of the people and a more loyal ally to the president.
The internecine fight has also allowed Warnock, a Black Baptist pastor, to consolidate support and threaten to win the race outright if Democrats win Georgia by a high enough margin.
Warnock's stump speeches highlight his background, raised in low-income housing in Savannah and a recipient of substantial student loans to attend Morehouse College, as a more grounded alternative to the wealthy Senator and the provocative North Georgia congressman.
"We must vote tomorrow, because it's harder now for children growing up in urban centers in Atlanta and in disaffected rural communities in North Georgia than it was for me," he said. "In other words, I had a path to a prosperous and more productive life."
Democrats need four seats to fully regain control of the Senate, and the prospect of picking up Georgia's two seats — potentially both through runoffs — on the way to winning control in the White House is a tantalizing prospect that has led to Obama, Biden and Harris to stump across the state in the closing weeks.
The shift in polling has also put Republicans on the defensive, with the president holding several rallies here, including a massive event in Rome Sunday evening where he sought to energize his white rural base to try and offset demographic changes in metro Atlanta.
Further complicating the calculus for who shall emerge victorious is a record-setting early voting period that saw nearly as many votes cast by the end of October as the 4.1 million total votes in the 2016 presidential race.
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