Politics

• Georgia Republicans Hoping for Miracle
• Why is Warnock Winning?
• Walker Outspent and ‘Out-Campaigned’

1. The Republican Party’s hopes that its nominee, Herschel Walker, could still win the US Senate race in Georgia in the December 6 runoff are “fading.”

Meanwhile his rival, Democrat incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, is increasingly in the lead, according to a recent report from Politico. 

Georgia Republicans Hoping for Miracle

Neither Warnock nor Walker could clinch the seat in the regular midterm elections last month, as none received more than 50% of all votes.

The Democrat incumbent on November 8 got 49.4% of the votes – or 1,943,737, while the Republican challenger was a close second with 48.5% – or 1,907,272 votes.

Even though the Republicans are still “hope for a surprise” with Herschel Walker’s candidacy, their mood is getting grimmer by the day as the December 6 runoff is approaching.

Why is Warnock Winning?

At the same time, Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign has picked up momentum, even if a Walker victory remains a possibility.

ATLANTA — Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has built up an advantage in Georgia’s record-breaking early vote, putting Republican Herschel Walker in a position where he’ll need to deliver big on Election Day to win in Tuesday’s Senate runoff.

Georgians have been bombarded with TV ads, radio messages, direct mail and ceaseless fundraising appeals in the closely watched Senate race. Many of them are ready for it to be over.

“It’s been very, very exhausting,” said Ana Gomez, a sophomore at Georgia Tech who attended Warnock’s rally on campus Monday.

Over the long and grueling campaign, the two candidates have employed different strategies, with Warnock putting a premium on appeals to moderates and independents as Walker seeks to energize the Republican base in this former GOP stronghold.

On the airwaves, Warnock and his Democratic allies have outspent Republicans since the Nov. 8 general election.

But on the final day before the runoff, it was all about juicing turnout as each candidate held a packed schedule of events, focusing on areas where they have the strongest voter appeal.

Warnock hosted events in the Atlanta area with Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., as well as 25-year-old Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and the rapper Killer Mike, with an evening rally scheduled in the heart of the city.

“Seeing what Herschel Walker has said and the approach that he takes with his campaigning — to me, it just seems like a very obvious choice,” said Gomez, who said she plans to vote for Warnock on Tuesday. “What I really appreciate about Warnock is that he tries to appeal to both sides.”

A president will be visiting Georgia on Thursday — only not the current one or the one who wants his old job back.

Former President Barack Obama's evening rally for Sen. Raphael Warnock marks a chance for Democrats to drive up early-voting numbers that have already set records. Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, who recorded robocalls for Warnock, are obvious enough choices for Democrats to turn to in a race featuring two Black candidates.

But President Joe Biden has no plans to be in the state before the Tuesday runoff pitting Warnock against Republican Herschel Walker. The White House has said the president is "willing to do whatever is asked of him" in the race, though Warnock has deflected on whether he put in an ask, pointing out how time is tight before Tuesday, ABC's Lalee Ibssa reports.

The question of former President Donald Trump's involvement in the race is more complicated, given his relationship with Georgia Republicans and memories about how his involvement in the two January 2021 runoffs turned out.

Trump is almost singlehandedly responsible for Walker's candidacy and his easy path through the primary. But that same support may have cost Republicans votes last month: Gov. Brian Kemp got some 200,000 votes that Walker didn't, and Kemp cruised to a more than 7-point win even while Walker lost his head-to-head against Warnock.

Republicans are hoping for a surprise in the closely divided state, but their mood has turned grim about Herschel Walker’s chances.

Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker barnstormed Georgia in a final plea for votes amid signs of growing momentum for the Democratic incumbent — and fading GOP hopes — ahead of Tuesday’s runoff.

Both parties are expecting a close outcome on Tuesday in the closely divided state. After a November election that defied expectations in countless races around the country, a Walker victory is not out of the question.

But from Warnock’s first-place finish in the first round of voting to scattered polling and temperature checks of Democratic and GOP operatives, Warnock heads into Election Day as at least a slight favorite to win a full six-year term.

“I think a lot of Republicans are hoping we’ll be pleasantly surprised, but there aren’t a lot of indications out there to base that on,” said Jason Shepherd, former chair of the Cobb County GOP. “Just a lot of hope and faith in things unseen. It’s the Christmas season, after all.”

Over the weekend, Warnock had the heavier schedule of the two: On Saturday and Sunday, he sprinted to six events in various cities, while also delivering a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he serves as senior pastor and told parishoners that “voting is a form of prayer.”

Warnock warned repeatedly on the campaign trail that record-breaking turnout in the early voting period does not guarantee victory. Democrats have been encouraged that the large early vote totals mean a significant portion of their voters have already cast ballots — and that Republicans wil need to make up serious ground on Election Day turnout.

Two days after a gunman opened fire on people gathered for a drag show at an LGBTQ+ club in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing five people and injuring 19, Herschel Walker, Georgia Republican senatorial candidate, released an ad in which he appeared alongside a former college athlete who claimed she had been victimized by the inclusion of trans women in her sport. 

As a descendant of a Holocaust survivor, I see frightening parallels in the long lead-up of laws in Hitler’s prewar Germany with the current climate for trans people in this country.

In the ad, former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines says, “For more than a decade, I worked so hard, 4 a.m. practices, to be the best. But my senior year, I was forced to compete against a biological male,” referring to Lea Thomas, a trans woman. Walker adds, “A man won the swimming title that belonged to a woman.”

Nevermind that Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth place in the March race. Nevermind that both received trophies, only Gaines received hers later by mail. In her view, she was the real woman on the podium — and Thomas had taken something from her.

With views like this permeating high-profile, mainstream politics, the implications for trans people are truly chilling. That Walker could be elected to the U.S. Senate in the Georgia runoff election Tuesday makes it even more so.

Watching Republicans adopt violent transphobia as a central plank of their party is alarming, but it’s not without precedent. And history has shown us time and time and again what happens when people stay silent when groups of people are oppressed. 

From a story on politico.com by Natalie Allison and Meredith McGraw headlined “Walker to Trump: Please phone it in.”:

A week before the Georgia Senate runoff, former President Donald Trump has no plans to appear on stage with his handpicked candidate, Herschel Walker. It’s not even under discussion.

The retired football star is traveling the state with a rotating cast of national GOP surrogates. But unlike Georgia’s January 2021 Senate runoff, when the former president held two rallies including an election-eve event, this time Trump has been conspicuously out of the picture.

Both national and state Republicans say it would be best for Trump to, quite literally, just phone it in for the runoff.

“I think he’d be more effective if he did it by phone,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia Republican, suggesting Trump participate in an election-eve automated call to GOP voters.

Gingrich compared the hypothetical get-out-the-vote call to what Trump did for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021, when Youngkin kept a healthy distance from Trump throughout the campaign, but benefitted from his 11th-hour appeal to GOP base voters.

Trump, who launched his own presidential campaign on Nov. 15, did not hold a rally for Walker during the general election, doing so only ahead of the state’s May primary. But people close to Trump say he has found other ways to be helpful to Walker, by continuing online fundraising and possibly holding a tele-rally in the coming week. And Trump also reiterated support for the candidate during his own presidential announcement at Mar-a-Lago.

After Raphael Warnock won 49.4% of the election vote and Herschel Walker 48.5%, Georgia is headed to a runoff election.

Georgia law requires a runoff election if a candidate does not receive at least 50% of the vote in general elections. Louisiana is the only other state that has this requirement.

While this may seem like a fair law, ensuring a candidate is backed by half of the voters, the law has a racist background.

From 1917 to 1962, Georgia used the county unit voting system, allocating a certain number of votes based off classification (rural, urban and town counties) to Georgia counties regardless of population. The candidate who won the majority of a county’s vote represented the whole county in the election.

This voting system suppressed black voters by giving the same number of votes to predominantly white rural counties as the most populous county with many black voters.

In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the county unit voting system by reaffirming the “one person, one vote” concept.

“The origins of the runoff election process as the continuation of the blatantly racist county unit system came as the result of an effort by a number of legislators to curtail the power ‘bloc voting,’ a euphemism for Black voters, following the upending of the county unit system,” according to the U.S. Vote Foundation, which is a private, nonprofit nonpartisan public charity founded in 2005.

This was proved in a deposition in a legal case in 1984 by State Representative Denmark Groover, who proposed the runoff election system for Georgia.

With one week to go before Georgia’s Senate runoff, heavy hitters and big dollars from both national parties are pouring into the state for a race that will determine the balance of power in the Democratic-controlled Senate next year.

But the most sought-after stamp of approval belongs to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who was comfortably reelected to a second term this month after defying a Donald Trump-backed primary challenge earlier in the year.

While the midterm elections in November are over, there is still a hotly contested race going on in Georgia. Democratic incumbent Ralphael Warnock and Republican Challenger and former NFL star Herschel Walker are headed to a run-off. What does that mean for the state of Georgia and the United States Senate? How can the Black vote move the needle?

Co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter organization, Latosha Brown stopped by the GetUp! Church this morning. There are lots of issues around voting and democracy, specifically impacting communities of color and Brown gives us the information on why our vote matters so much.

ERICA: Let’s talk about the runoffs, the Senate race in Georgia, incumbent Democrat, Reverend Raphael, Warnock, and Republican Herschel Walker, can you explain why this race is so important in the state of Georgia and for the country?

• 2022 Midterm Elections

 

Georgia has broken its record for the most ballots cast in one day during early voting, with just one week until a pivotal runoff in the state’s U.S. Senate race between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. 

On Monday, over 239,160 Georgians cast their ballot, according to Interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling. This beats the previous record for early voting in one day of over 233,252 votes in 2018. Sterling tweeted Monday afternoon that they’ll “break a quarter million voters today.” 

“We’re excited,” Sterling told CBS News. “It’s a testament to voters and poll workers and poll managers across the state to pull this off. It’s not easy to move a quarter of a million people.” 

 

Over the holiday weekend, where some counties were able to conduct early voting after Georgia Democrats sued, over 180,000 votes were cast. That was about 2.6% of the total active voter base in Georgia. 

According to data from Georgia’s Secretary of State office, 46% of that weekend’s voters were Black and 57% were female. 

Early voter turnout for the runoff has been highest in several Democratic leaning counties around Atlanta such as Fulton, Gwinnett and DeKalb County. 

In the Nov. 8 election, neither Warnock nor Walker surpassed the 50% mark needed to avoid a runoff election. Warnock won 49.4% of the vote and Walker got 48.5% of the vote. While Democrats have secured the majority in the Senate, a Warnock win would give the party more space to pass their agenda and put an end to current power sharing of committees.