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The Senate runoffs in Georgia are incredibly consequential, but as we get deeper into the holiday season and contend with the daily tantrums of our current president, we may hear less about them than we should.
But it’s critical that we make sure Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win these races, so let’s do a quick check in on some recent news.
Republicans vs. Republicans
One of the more interesting dynamics in this race is that for the past 5 weeks, Trump has been raging against both Governor Brian Kemp and the secretary of state Brad Raffensberger (both of whom are Republicans) because he feels they should be working to overturn the will of Georgian voters who turned the state blue for Joe Biden.
Trump has been relentless and both Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have made their loyalties known: They are 100% behind … Trump. They’ve disparaged Raffensberger publicly multiple times on the campaign trail and have even called on him to resign.
Nevertheless, both of the candidates are running into problems at their public appearances, where Trump supporters are angry at them for not doing more to get Trump the win they believe he deserves. Like this:
Just yesterday, they called out Raffensberger to release voter registration data, insinuating that there’s something amiss about so many new voters being registered after the November election (even though it is widely known that the Democrats are doing everything they can to register newly 18 year olds so they can vote in the runoffs.) He fired back in a spicy statement that it was “embarassing” that they didn’t already know that the information was not only public, but that their campaign already had the info.
Bad Headlines for the Republicans
To say that both Loeffler and Perdue have been unethical is putting it mildly. It feels like every couple of days another bombshell of an article comes about how good they are at taking care of their self-interest. A sampling:
Ga. Sen. Perdue boosts wealth with well-timed stock trades
David Perdue Profited from a Navy Contractor’s Stock While Overseeing the Naval Fleet
Georgia GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler Just Got Caught Violating the Law
Georgia Republican senator had ‘no idea’ she posed with neo-Nazi
How Kelly Loeffler’s Firm Facilitated an Enron-Like Scandal
Stock Trades After Coronavirus Briefing Complicate Loeffler’s Reelection Bid
On top of all this, both candidates also backed the Texas lawsuit that was quickly rejected by the Supreme Court. And even now, after the Electoral College affirmed Joe Biden as President-Elect, Loeffler nor Perdue still won’t recognize him as the legitimate leader. Loeffler tweeted that she will “continue fighting for Donald Trump.”
So, we’ve established that they want to remain in the Senate for their own greed and power, and have zero interest in doing right by Georgians.
Now, just for a breath of fresh air, watch this ad from Reverand Raphael Warnock. It’s smart and calls out GOP tactics all at the same time: (click HERE if the video doesn’t autoplay)
The Numbers
Essentially, the polls show that both of these races are neck and neck. You can check out FiveThirtyEight’s composite polls HERE. Now, I’m of the mind that we should take off 5 points of the Democrats’ polls (based on what we saw in the polls in November) and if that’s the case, we’ve got some catching up to do. Not to mention that even if we are ahead in the polls, we should never let up. Runoffs elections have very low turnout and so it’s all about getting your voters to the polls.
Which brings me to a couple of recent statistics that I wanted to share. The first is that Stacey Abrams recently announced that 1.2 million Georgians already requested absentee ballots and 85,000 of those applications came from voters who didn’t vote in November! (Here’s a short but uplifting read from The New Yorker about a couple of teenagers who are registering 18 year olds in the state.)
Also, Monday was the first day of in-person early voting in Georgia, and roughly 168,000 people voted. Compare that to only 136,000 who voted on the first day for the presidential election!
That’s all for today’s update. If you can spare some time or money to help the Democrats win these Senate races, check out my article HERE on the many ways you can get involved. Thank you for taking action!
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