One day after the Electoral College solidified his victory over President Donald Trump, President-elect Joe Biden returns to Georgia Tuesday to rally support for Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock.
Biden’s visit comes just one day after his presidential win was reaffirmed by the Electoral College’s vote Monday evening. The former Vice President will headline a rally for Ossoff and Warnock at Pratt-Pullman Yard at 2 p.m. CBS46 will have a livestream of the event.
In the general election, Biden became the first Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win the Peach State. Early voting in the election kicked off Monday, giving Georgians two weeks to cast a ballot ahead of January 5. If both Democratic candidates win Senate seats, Congress would be split 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaker vote.
Thus, the race will serve as an early test of Biden’s political power as President. The race will also come as President Trump refuses to admit defeat, despite losing the popular vote, the Electoral College vote, and in front of the United States Supreme Court.
Democrats hope Biden’s image of a mainstream, unifying figure can help make his party’s case in Georgia. The political ads from Democrats in the state has struck a more positive tone compared to attack ads from the Republican Senators.
“The president-elect can motivate our base but also what we call the Biden coalition,” said Tharon Johnson, previously a senior adviser to Biden’s Georgia campaign. “That means the progressives, the liberals, the moderates — and I’d add some suburban Republicans and even some rural voters who might have gotten away from us before.”
Biden’s campaign, together with the Democratic National Committee, has steered about $5 million to Democrats’ coordinated campaign in the state. The money is paying for about 50 campaign staffers, including many focused on suburbs and smaller cities where Biden outperformed usual Democratic marks. The Biden campaign and the national party also have raised about $10 million directly for Ossoff and Warnock.
But Biden’s biggest impact could be vouching for Ossoff and Warnock. The general election results show why the two could benefit from riding Biden’s coattails.
Biden topped all candidates on Georgia’s November ballot with nearly 2,475,000 votes, finishing about 12,000 ahead of Trump out of 5 million ballots cast. Perdue finished with about the same number of votes as Trump and led Ossoff by about 88,000 votes, meaning Ossoff ran about 100,000 votes behind Biden.
The record general election turnout — about 850,000 more presidential votes than in 2016 — demonstrated considerable enthusiasm across the spectrum. And, certainly, Democrats’ decade-long organizing efforts in Georgia, especially in the booming metropolitan areas around Atlanta, paid off. But the gap between Biden and Ossoff suggests Biden’s margin depended at least partly on moderates and even some conservatives, especially in the Atlanta suburbs, who simply did not like Trump.
Republicans need just one more seat for a Senate majority. Democrats must sweep the runoff elections to get a 50-50 Senate and make Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaking majority vote.
Georgia Democratic chair Nikema Williams, a congresswoman-elect from Atlanta, pushed back on the idea that Ossoff and Warnock need Biden to have a path to victory. She framed the contests more about the distinctions between a Democratic and Republican Senate.
“I welcome my president-elect to Georgia,” Williams said, but “it’s not about appealing to one segment of voters.” Instead, she argued, the runoffs and Biden’s visit are about “appealing to all Georgians who want to see something different” on matters like more economic aid amid the surging coronavirus pandemic.
Johnson, who worked on the Biden campaign, said it’s impossible to separate those issues from Biden himself.
In Biden’s fall campaign, Johnson said, “our first goal was to not let them label him as this left-wing, radical socialist.” Now that he’s won, Johnson said, “Who better to explain exactly what these Senate seats mean and why he needs them to get things done?”
Warnock and Ossoff have scoffed at the “socialist” labels from Republicans. Perdue and Loeffler have claimed falsely that the two Democrats support single-payer health insurance that would abolish private health insurance and want to “defund the police.”
But because Ossoff and Warnock have never held public office and are still building their brands, it’s harder for them to offer the kind of retort Biden made in August as Trump was hammering him as a leftist.
“Ask yourself,” Biden said, “do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?”
Even some Republicans acknowledge the dynamics make Biden the ideal validator.
“He’s a known quantity,” said Republican Jack Kingston, a former congressman and Trump ally. “Voters know him, or even if they don’t really know him, they say, ’Oh, Joe Biden. He’s been there a long time, hasn’t he?”
Kingston noted Georgia’s population and demographic shifts in the state have favored Democrats, meaning the party has a larger liberal, urbanized base now. Biden, he said, knows how to tap that base without angering the middle.
“He’s been doing this for decades,” Kingston said. “He’ll give a nod to the liberals. He’ll give a nod to the mainstream. He knows what to say without embarrassing or alienating anybody.”
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