AP
Georgia voters are deciding the balance of power in Congress in a pair of high-stakes Senate second-round elections that will help determine the capacity of President-elect Joe Biden to enact what could be the most progressive government agenda in generations.
Republicans are unified against Biden’s plans for health care, environmental protection and civil rights, but some fear that outgoing President Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to undermine the integrity of the nation’s voting systems may turn off voters in Georgia.
At a rally in northwest Georgia on the eve of In Tuesday’s runoff, Trump repeatedly stated that the November election was riddled with fraud that Republican officials, including his former attorney general and Georgia’s chief of elections, say did not occur. At the same time, Trump encouraged his supporters to come out strong in the Tuesday contests in Georgia.
“You have to invade him tomorrow,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters, minimizing the threat of fraud.
Democrats must win both state Senate elections to obtain a majority in the Senate. In that scenario, the Senate would be equally divided 50 – 50 with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a runoff for Democrats.
Democrats won a narrow majority in the House and White House during the November general elections.
The January elections in Georgia, necessary because no Senate candidate received a majority of the votes in the general elections, they have been unique for many reasons, not least because the contenders essentially ran as teams, and even campaigned together at times.
A pageant features Democrat Raphael Warnock, who serves as senior pastor of the Atlanta church where slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and preached. Warnock, 51, grew up in public housing and spent most of his adult life preaching in Baptist churches.
Warnock faces to Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, a 50 year old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago by the Republican governor of the state. She is only the second woman to represent Georgia in the Senate, although race has emerged as a campaign focus much more than gender. Loeffler and his allies have seized on excerpts from Warnock’s sermons at the historic black church to call him extreme. Dozens of religious and civil rights leaders have backed down.
The other election faces former 71 year old business executive David Perdue, who held the seat in the Senate until his term officially expired Sunday, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the youngest member of the Senate if elected. He first rose to national prominence in 2017 when he launched an unsuccessful bid for the House special election.
Even a narrowly divided Democratic Senate would not guarantee Biden everything what you want, given the House rules that require 60 votes to push through most important laws. But if Democrats lose even one of Tuesday’s contests, Biden would have little chance of a quick vote up or down on his more ambitious plans to expand government-backed health care coverage, strengthen the middle class, address inequality. race and combat climate change. A Republican-controlled Senate would also create a more difficult path for Biden’s cabinet elections and judicial nominees.
“Georgia, the whole nation is watching you. The power is literally in your hands, ”Biden declared at his own rally in Atlanta on Monday. “A state can chart the course, not just for the next four years, but for the next generation as well.”
Despite fears among some Republicans that Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud election could depress turnout, the two Republican candidates strongly support it. Perdue said Tuesday that Trump “of course” would deserve credit if the Republicans won.
“What the president said last night is that, even if you’re upset about all of that, you have to stand up with us and fight, “Perdue told” Fox & Friends. ” “We will look back on this day if we do not vote and we will truly regret the day we hand over the keys to the kingdom to the Democrats.”
Loeffler pledged Monday to join a small but growing number of Republican senators protesting Congress’s expected certification of Biden’s victory on Wednesday.
Democrats have criticized Perdue and Loeffler, each of the wealthiest members of the Senate, for exchanges of Notoriously timed personal actions after members of Congress received briefing on public health and economic threats from COVID – 19 as Trump and the Republicans downplayed the pandemic. None of the exchanges have been found to violate Senate law or ethics, but Warnock and Ossoff have flagged Republicans as selfish and disconnected.
Perdue and Loeffler have responded by criticizing Democrats as sure to usher in a lunge to the left in national politics. Neither Warnock nor Ossoff are socialists, as the Republicans claim. However, they support Biden’s agenda.
This week’s elections mark the formal end of the turbulent election season of 2020, more than two months after the rest the nation will finish voting. The stakes have attracted nearly $ 500 in campaign spending to a once solidly Republican state that now stands as the nation’s premier battleground.
“It’s really about whether you can forge an agenda that moves the nation forward without meaningful commitment,” said Martin Luther King III, the son of the civil rights icon. “There is a lot at stake.”
The results will also help show whether the political coalition that drove Biden’s victory was an anti-Trump anomaly or part of a new landscape.
Biden won the 16 Georgia electoral votes by about 12. 000 votes out of the 5 million cast in November.
Democratic success will likely depend on pushing for a large turnout from African Americans, young voters, college-educated voters, and women – all groups that helped Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 to win Georgia. Meanwhile, Republicans have focused on energizing their own base of white men and voters beyond the core of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
More than 3 million Georgians voted by Tuesday. Some districts in the Atlanta metropolitan area showed slight to steady turnout Tuesday morning with no lines and it took voters only minutes to fill out their ballots.
In Downtown Atlanta, Henry Dave Chambliss, 67, voted for both Republicans. He said he wants Republicans to maintain control of the Senate to ensure the incoming Biden administration does not slide “all the way to the left.”
“I am moderately successful and know they will come for more than my money that I’ve earned, ”said Chambliss. “I was born a Southern Democrat, and I just hope and pray that some moderate voices are heard and things get more in the middle of the road.”
Beverly McDaniel cast her vote Tuesday for the tomorrow amid low turnout at a neighborhood center gym in Atlanta. She voted for both Democrats and said she believes they would do better in coping with the hardships caused by the coronavirus.
“Our children are not fully, fully in school as they are supposed to be and people don’t have jobs, ”said McDaniel, a medical field worker. He said the virus “is taking over where we should let the government take over.”