Politics

25 counties across Georgia kicked off early voting Saturday in preparation for the December 6 runoff election for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA). And turnout was “massive.”

There was a question about whether Saturday’s voting could even happen. Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger at first said that Saturday voting was fine. But later, he reversed himself pointing to a state law against voting two days following a holiday.

Senator Warnock and the Democratic Party of Georgia went to court. Their argument was that this state law did not “apply to runoffs.” When a Fulton County judge agreed, the secretary of state’s office then “appealed to the state Court of Appeals, which upheld the initial ruling.”

The Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the Republican National Committee took the issue to the Georgia Supreme Court, which denied their request. Republicans do better when a smaller number of voters come out.

But in DeKalb County, it took two hours for voters to make their way through the lines. The town of Marietta opened its polls at noon in Cobb County.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been spending much of his time in Georgia lately in the hopes of helping fellow Republican Herschel Walker win the Senate runoff race against incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock (D). If Walker wins, he would ensure that the Senate stays at the current 50-50 power-sharing split between the two parties (with tie-breaking votes handed to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris). If Warnock prevails, he will alter the power balance, favoring the Democrats 51-49.

As per Senator Cruz, there's plenty riding on this one vote, which is yet to be determined. In an interview with Fox News, he said, “If the Democrats win here, Joe Biden can quickly fill the federal courts with radicals, with radicals who would take away your liberties and mine, who would take away your rights to religious liberty, your rights to free speech, your Second Amendment rights. It also puts us incredibly close to [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer being able to end the filibuster.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lent his support to Herschel Walker on Thursday as Walker’s runoff election against Raphael Warnock looms on Dec. 6.

“What we need to understand is that if we win this seat, it changes the course of the country. It changes the Republican Party forever because Herschel Walker is a transformational figure in American politics,” Graham told a gathering of almost 400 people in Gainesville, on scenic Lake Lanier in north Georgia.

He got the crowd going for Walker on a cold night outdoors in front of the Carroll Daniel Construction building in downtown Gainesville. Graham was to have been joined by fellow Senators Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and John Kennedy (R-La.), but they had to return to Washington for a vote, said a member of Walker’s staff.

Walker’s campaign has been gathering support from other Republicans in a race that will determine whether Democrats control the Senate or have to share power with the Republicans. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who won a decisive victory over Stacey Abrams last week in another closely watched race, is putting his campaign machinery to work for Walker.

“Want to feel warmer?” Graham asked the crowd, bundled up against temperatures that dropped into the 20s overnight. “We fired Nancy Pelosi today.”

• 2022 Midterm Elections

Judge says Georgia law allows Saturday voting for Senate runoff

 

A judge on Friday said Georgia law allows counties to offer early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which is the only possibility for Saturday voting before next month’s Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

Warnock’s campaign, along with the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, filed a lawsuit this week arguing that early voting should be allowed that day. They were challenging guidance by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that said it would be illegal to hold early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26, the day after a state holiday.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox on Friday issued an order saying Georgia law “does not specifically prohibit counties from conducting advanced voting on Saturday, November 26, 2022, for a runoff election.” He also prohibited the state from interfering in efforts to hold early voting that day or preventing any votes cast that day from being counted.

 

“We disagree with the Court’s order and look forward to a prompt appeal,” Raffensperger’s office said in an emailed statement.

Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took a moment, while stumping for U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia this week, to address how Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential announcement might affect the race leading up to the Dec. 6 runoff against incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Speaking with reporters following a Wednesday rally with Walker in McDonough, Georgia, Huckabee expressed hope that Trump’s announcement would have a positive impact on the Georgia Senate race and said that the former president’s speech was “an extraordinary re-emergence of the Donald Trump America fell in love with in 2016.”

Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in a Tuesday speech at his Mar-a-Lago home in West Palm Beach, Florida, despite pleas from a number of Republicans to wait until after the runoff between Walker and Warnock.

“I sure hope it has a wonderful effect,” Huckabee said when asked about Trump’s announcement before shifting to praising Walker as a “gifted communicator.”

RAPHAEL WARNOCK RAILS AGAINST HERSCHEL WALKER IN STATEWIDE TOUR KICKOFF: ‘YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO KNOW STUFF’

Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee campaigns with Republican Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker on November 16, 2022, in McDonough, Georgia.
(Team Herschel, Inc.)

“I just hope that the people of Georgia give America a wonderful gift. If the [Georgia Bulldogs] can take number one in football, I’m okay with that. But please send us Herschel Walker to the U.S. Senate,” the professed Arkansas Razorbacks fan added.

The office of Georgia’s pro-life Attorney General Chris Carr is appealing Judge Robert McBurney’s November 15th ruling which overturned portions of the state’s Heartbeat Bill dealing with abortion restrictions. The Georgia LIFE Act would protect unborn children from abortion once an unborn child’s heartbeat can be detected.

Judge McBurney said “those portions of the law never actually became law because they were unconstitutional at the time they were signed into law – before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,” according to the Georgia Life Alliance, NRLC’s state affiliate. “As such, he ruled that Georgia cannot enforce those sections of the law. Abortions will now temporarily be legal in Georgia until 22 weeks.”

“Obviously, the state’s legal team has strong grounds for appealing this illogical ruling,” state Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch told Maya T. Prabhu of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The Legislature acted to protect the unborn on behalf of the people of Georgia, and we are confident that the unfortunate situation created by a lone judge’s opinion will be temporary and quickly resolved within the judiciary.”

State Rep. Ed Setzler sponsored the 2019 legislation. “He called McBurney’s ruling reversing the federal court of appeals’ July decision ‘nonsense.’”

Seltzer told Prabhu, “It’s no surprise that a liberal Fulton County judge put a temporary roadblock into the implementation of the (pro-life law).” He added, “It won’t take long for the state Supreme Court to rule in favor of the (law) and put it into full effect.”

• 1) It was about more than the economy
• 2) An unpopular president didn’t sink Democrats
• 3) Donald Trump was a big drag
• 4) Abortion was a big motivator
• 5) The polls were pretty accurate
• 6) Candidates mattered big time
• 7) Latino voters might have shifted right — some places
• 8) Voters did care about the threats to democracy
•  

 

The 2022 midterms are not yet settled. Votes are still being tallied in a score of Western contests, including close statewide races in Arizona and Nevada, and a run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat awaits.

But voters delivered plenty of lessons already, including answers to some of the big questions we considered last week. Among the answers are some unique takeaways from this particular election cycle, like the effects of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on their parties’ candidates, or the drag that high inflation and economic malaise would have on Democrats. We also got some clues about American politics in the longer term, like the role of candidate quality, the accuracy of polls, and changing trends among Latino voters.

Here’s what we can say about the eight questions the midterms were supposed to answer.

A group of leading conservative research and political activist organizations have called on the House and Senate Republican Conferences to delay leadership elections, challenging the leaderships of Rep. McCarthy and Sen. Mitch McConnell.

The two-paragraph letter has called for the elections to be delayed until after Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff election, between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, on December 6. Former Rep. David McIntosh of Indiana, who heads the Club for Growth and was a signatory to the letter, has said that the elections must be delayed “until we know the outcome of all the elections—specifically the Georgia runoff and the remaining 23 House races,” per a statement on the group’s website.

The letter was signed by prominent conservatives including Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the Conservative Political Action Conference, and Mark Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff in the Trump administration who chaired the House Freedom Caucus when he served in Congress, according to a page obtained by Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.

PHOENIX (Reuters) -Democrats held onto control of the U.S. Senate while limiting projected losses in the House, handing a major victory to President Joe Biden and extinguishing hopes of the “red wave” that Republicans had expected leading into the midterm elections.

Democratic leaders described the outcome – sealed late Saturday with a win for the incumbent senator in Nevada – as both a vindication of their agenda and a rebuke of Republican candidates, many of whom had parroted former president Donald Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud.

“We were on the edge of autocracy and, thank God, the American people pulled us back in this election,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference on Sunday.

The better-than-expected performance gave Biden, who struggled with low approval ratings ahead of Tuesday’s elections amid persistently high inflation, a political lift ahead of what are expected to be intense talks on a range of geopolitical issues with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Monday in Indonesia.

Republicans, however, remained close to seizing control of the House of Representatives as officials continued counting ballots, with returns still flowing in for several races, including many in liberal-leaning California.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is calling for the Republican Party to undergo reform after it was projected the party would not regain control of the U.S. Senate Saturday night.

“The old party is dead. Time to bury it. Build something new,” Hawley tweeted following Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s (D-NV) narrow victory over Republican Adam Laxalt in the Nevada Senate race.

The old party is dead. Time to bury it. Build something new

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 13, 2022

Hawley’s call to “bury” and “build” a new Republican Party comes after several within the party were hopeful they would regain control of the Senate since they only needed to flip one seat. However, as of Saturday, the GOP is now at risk of losing one seat in the Upper Chamber depending on the results of the Georgia Senate runoff in December.

The day before the Midterm elections, Hawley indicated his support for change within the party following his statement that he would not support Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for Senate GOP leadership.