Rev. Raphael Warnock (left) and Jon Ossoff (right) campaigned in Atlanta on Election Day in the U.S. Senate runoff races on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Rev. Raphael Warnock is poised to defeat Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler in Tuesday’s runoff election, handing Democrats a Senate seat in Georgia for the first time in nearly 20 years.
Warnock’s co-campaigner, Democrat Jon Ossoff, also declared victory over Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue early Wednesday with a slim 16,000-vote lead in an election that looks to shatter turnout records for Georgia runoffs with around 4.5 million votes.
Should those results stand, Democrats will gain control of both chambers of Congress and the White House following President-elect Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 general election.
Thousands of votes remained to be counted in heavily Democratic counties such as DeKalb, Fulton and Chatham. The outlook was enough for several news outlets including the Associated Press to call the race for Warnock as his lead grew to more than 53,000 votes overnight into early Wednesday.
“Every day I’m in the United States Senate, I will fight for you,” Warnock said in a victory speech just after midnight. “I will fight for your family.”
Ossoff joined suit, claiming victory Wednesday morning after CNN projected he will win. The Associated Press has not yet called his race.
“I will give everything I’ve got to ensuring that Georgia’s interests are represented in the U.S. Senate,” Ossoff said in a video thanking supporters.
The Republican senators have not conceded defeat so far. Loeffler told supporters around midnight she still sees “a path to victory,” while Perdue’s campaign issued an overnight message saying he “will be victorious” once all votes are counted in the “exceptionally close election.”
The runoffs have been among the most consequential in Georgia history, dominating airwaves and political talk for the past two months with control of the federal government hanging in the balance.
More than $830 million was spent by the four campaigns and outside groups in both races, dwarfing previous fundraising records in American politics, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. Celebrities and national politicians flocked to the state. Trump and Biden held rallies twice each.
The campaigns themselves were grueling affairs as Perdue and Loeffler cast their Democratic opponents as big-government socialists while Ossoff and Warnock framed the Republican incumbents as self-serving wealthy elites.
All four campaigns combed the state for every vote they could find after the Nov. 3 election saw Georgia flip for a Democratic candidate for the first time in a presidential contest since 1992, driven by strong gains in former Republican suburban strongholds like Gwinnett and Cobb counties.
Like the November election, vote-by-mail and early voting boosted turnout in the runoffs to record-breaking numbers as voters avoided long lines on Election Day due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. By Tuesday, more than 3 million ballots had already been cast by mail and during the three-week early voting period.
Coronavirus loomed large in the runoffs amid long-delayed negotiations between Senate Republicans and House Democrats over a second round of economic relief, as each side accused the other of delaying passage of a nearly $1 trillion legislative package.
A relief bill finally pushed through Congress that handed Democrats ammunition to continue attacking the Republican senators after Trump trashed the bill, calling it a “disgrace” for including $600 stimulus checks instead of the $2,000 checks he wanted.
Trump also sparked fears among Republican leaders with his relentless assault on Georgia’s election system since his November loss. They worried Trump’s influence risked depressing voter turnout in conservative parts of the state where the president’s loyal followers leaned toward believing his unproven claims of election fraud.
Both senators refused to acknowledge Biden’s win throughout the runoffs, with Loeffler going so far as to say she plans to join around a dozen other senators in contesting Congress’ vote on Wednesday to ratify the Electoral College results. Democrats accused her and Perdue of all but treason.
“If we win these races, we can turn the page on the last four years,” Ossoff said outside an Atlanta polling place on Tuesday.
Loeffler, who fended off Trump ally U.S. Rep. Doug Collins in a free-for-all Nov. 3 special election, dismissed concerns over the president’s influence ahead of Election Day, arguing Republican voters recognized her campaign and Perdue’s as a “firewall against socialism.”
“I’m proud of my campaign because we’ve shown Georgians the importance of this race, not just here in Georgia but to the entire country,” Loeffler said at a campaign stop Monday in Atlanta.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, and Perdue, a former corporate executive from Sea Island, both faced allegations of insider trading in the pandemic’s early days. Though both insisted a federal probe cleared them of wrongdoing, Ossoff and Warnock used the controversy to portray the wealthy senators as out-of-touch with average Georgians.
“There are campaigns and there are movements,” Warnock said at a stop in Atlanta Tuesday. “And there is a sense in Georgia that so much is at stake.”
Perdue and Loeffler landed their own blows. Ossoff, who runs an investigative journalism company, was hit over a China-connected Hong Kong group’s purchase of a documentary his company made. Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church, faced attacks for past comments on police and charges of interfering in a child-abuse investigation that he called a misunderstanding.
“If we don’t all get out and vote … everything President Trump has done to make America great again is gone,” Perdue said in a video that played at a Trump rally Monday in Dalton.
Ultimately, the two battling sides kept close to party positions on national issues. Perdue and Loeffler stressed pro-gun, anti-abortion and low-tax views while Ossoff and Warnock called for bolstering the Affordable Care Act and reforming use-of-force standards for police.
Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
The runoff races for U.S. Senate in Georgia looked too close to call late on Election Day, though Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock held favorable positions with thousands of votes left to be counted in suburban Atlanta counties and Savannah.
With more than a dozen counties still outstanding by midnight, Warnock clung to a slim 35,000-vote lead over opponent Republican U.S. Kelly Loeffler. Ossoff was neck-and-neck with Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue, with the senator leading by fewer than 2,000 votes.
More than 4 million votes had been cast in both races, which racked up historically huge absentee and early-voting turnout numbers. Several suburban counties that “likely lean toward Democrats” including DeKalb, Fulton and Chatham had not yet turned in final counts late Tuesday, said Georgia’s election manager, Gabriel Sterling.
“This is a contentious time,” Sterling said in a news conference just before midnight. “We want people to be patient.”
The runoffs have been among the most consequential in Georgia history, dominating airwaves and political talk for the past two months with control of the federal government hanging in the balance.
Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and the White House following President-elect Joe Biden’s defeat of President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 general election.
More than $830 million was spent by the four campaigns and outside groups in both races, dwarfing previous fundraising records in American politics, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. Celebrities and national politicians flocked to the state. Trump and Biden held rallies twice each.
The campaigns themselves were grueling affairs as Perdue and Loeffler cast their Democratic opponents as big-government socialists while Ossoff and Warnock framed the Republican incumbents as self-serving wealthy elites.
All four campaigns combed the state for every vote they could find after the Nov. 3 election saw Georgia flip for a Democratic candidate for the first time in a presidential contest since 1992, driven by strong gains in former Republican suburban strongholds like Gwinnett and Cobb counties.
Like the November election, vote-by-mail and early voting boosted turnout in the runoffs to record-breaking numbers as voters avoided long lines on Election Day due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. By Tuesday, more than 3 million ballots had already been cast by mail and during the three-week early voting period.
Coronavirus loomed large in the runoffs amid long-delayed negotiations between Senate Republicans and House Democrats over a second round of economic relief, as each side accused the other of delaying passage of a nearly $1 trillion legislative package.
A relief bill finally pushed through Congress that handed Democrats ammunition to continue attacking the Republican senators after Trump trashed the bill, calling it a “disgrace” for including $600 stimulus checks instead of the $2,000 checks he wanted.
Trump also sparked fears among Republican leaders with his relentless assault on Georgia’s election system since his November loss. They worried Trump’s influence risked depressing voter turnout in conservative parts of the state where the president’s loyal followers leaned toward believing his unproven claims of election fraud.
Both senators refused to acknowledge Biden’s win throughout the runoffs, with Loeffler going so far as to say she plans to join around a dozen other senators in contesting Congress’ vote on Wednesday to ratify the Electoral College results. Democrats accused her and Perdue of all but treason.
“If we win these races, we can turn the page on the last four years,” Ossoff said outside an Atlanta polling place on Tuesday.
Loeffler, who fended off Trump ally U.S. Rep. Doug Collins in a free-for-all Nov. 3 special election, dismissed concerns over the president’s influence ahead of Election Day, arguing Republican voters recognized her campaign and Perdue’s as a “firewall against socialism.”
“I’m proud of my campaign because we’ve shown Georgians the importance of this race, not just here in Georgia but to the entire country,” Loeffler said at a campaign stop Monday in Atlanta.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, and Perdue, a former corporate executive from Sea Island, both faced allegations of insider trading in the pandemic’s early days. Though both insisted a federal probe cleared them of wrongdoing, Ossoff and Warnock used the controversy to portray the wealthy senators as out-of-touch with average Georgians.
“There are campaigns and there are movements,” Warnock said at a stop in Atlanta Tuesday. “And there is a sense in Georgia that so much is at stake.”
Perdue and Loeffler landed their own blows. Ossoff, who runs an investigative journalism company, was hit over a China-connected Hong Kong group’s purchase of a documentary his company made. Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church, faced attacks for past comments on police and charges of interfering in a child-abuse investigation that he called a misunderstanding.
“If we don’t all get out and vote … everything President Trump has done to make America great again is gone,” Perdue said in a video that played at a Trump rally Monday in Dalton.
Ultimately, the two battling sides kept close to party positions on national issues. Perdue and Loeffler stressed pro-gun, anti-abortion and low-tax views while Ossoff and Warnock called for bolstering the Affordable Care Act and reforming use-of-force standards for police.
Thousands attended President Donald Trump’s rally ahead of the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Dalton, Georgia, on Jan. 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
DALTON – The race for control of Congress saw the country’s two most powerful leaders swoop into Georgia for competing last-push rallies on Monday, one day before the intensely watched U.S. Senate runoff elections.
President Donald Trump drew supporters by the thousands for a nighttime rally in Dalton, the heart of conservative Northwest Georgia, where voting has lagged so far in the runoffs amid doubts over the integrity of the state’s election system.
His visit came hours after President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes in the Nov. 3 general election, stopped in Atlanta to help keep Democratic momentum rolling after his campaign flipped the state blue for the first time in a presidential contest since 1992.
It was the second Georgia visit for both Trump and Biden since the election – which Trump will has refused to concede – and since Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock forced runoffs against incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The past two months have brought scores of national politicians and celebrities to Georgia for the runoffs, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign donations. Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and the White House for at least the next two years.
Trump, Biden and the campaigns they’re backing have all stressed the need to secure runoff wins on Tuesday.
Republicans fear the federal government would steer too close to socialism if both senators lose, while Democrats say split control of Congress would hamstring the Biden administration’s priorities on health care, climate change and the COVID-19 response.
“Georgia … the power is literally in your hands,” Biden said at his rally. “One state can chart the course, not just for the next four years, but for a generation.”
President-elect Joe Biden rallied for Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock ahead of the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Atlanta, Georgia, on Jan. 4, 2021. (Biden transition video)
While Biden spent the bulk of his speech touting the Democratic candidates, Trump devoted huge portions of his remarks to trashing Georgia’s election system as riddled with fraud – though state election officials and federal courts have rejected his claims.
State Republican leaders have worried the president’s assault on Georgia’s elections could scare off conservative voters and swing the runoffs for Ossoff and Warnock.
Trump had no such worries on Monday night. He urged his supporters to swarm the polls on Tuesday, despite his claims of widespread fraud in the November election.
“There’s no way we lost Georgia. There’s no way,” Trump said. “That was a rigged election.”
President Donald Trump rallied for Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of the Senate runoff elections in Dalton, Georgia, on Jan. 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
The president’s visit came amid a barrage of criticism for a phone call he had over the weekend during which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the Nov. 3 election results.
A recording of the call was made public by several news outlets on Sunday. In the call, Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough voters to reverse the election results in his favor. He chided Georgia’s election chief over unproven fraud claims, such as voting by dead people, nonresidents and felons, as well as vote-padding with illegal absentee ballots.
Raffensperger and his general counsel batted back the claims during the call.
While Biden avoided mention of the phone call during his rally, his preferred Senate candidates used it to slam the Republican senators for continuing to stand behind Trump and refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory.
Ossoff, who runs an investigative journalism company, called Perdue “not fit” to keep his seat after the call. Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, said Loeffler “does not care about Georgia voters.”
Perdue, a former corporate executive from Sea Island, shrugged off Trump’s call, telling FOX News he “didn’t hear anything that the president hasn’t already said for weeks now.”
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, skirted the call Monday morning by insisting her “sole focus” was on the runoff.
Former Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway (left) campaigned with U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (right) ahead of the Senate runoff elections in Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
The Republican senators’ decision to support Trump has highlighted fractures among Georgia GOP leaders as the president wages war against Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp – both Republicans – for not overturning the election results.
Loeffler, in particular, has clung to Trump at the expense of her biggest ally in the state, Kemp, who appointed her to fill retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat late last year. Kemp has not appeared on the campaign trail since Trump’s attacks started, even as Loeffler campaigned recently with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Neom.
Trump, who endorsed Kemp’s gubernatorial campaign in 2018, scorched the governor at Monday night’s rally after calling for him to resign last week.
“I’ll be here in a year and a half campaigning against your governor … and your crazy secretary of state,” Trump said.
President Donald Trump blasted Gov. Brian Kemp and hurled claims of election fraud at a rally in Dalton, Georgia, on Jan. 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia Democratic leaders have seized on the Republican infighting to make the case for Ossoff and Warnock, casting the two challengers as more level-headed options to represent Georgians in Washington than the Trump-allied incumbents.
“We are going to be determining whether this country moves forward and makes progress in solving its problems and issues, or whether we are going to continue with the political infighting that has dominated our politics in the last few years,” said Debby Peppers, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Whitfield County, where Trump held his rally.
Polls open Tuesday at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. for the runoff elections. Absentee ballots must be received at county elections offices before the polls close to be counted.
Lines were sparse outside the Cobb County Regional Library voter precinct through noon on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia investigators found no evidence of fraud in an audit of more than 15,000 absentee ballots in Cobb County stemming from a probe Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger launched earlier this month.
Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) called in to help conduct the audit found just two ballot envelopes with faulty signatures out of 15,118 envelopes examined late last week, GBI Director Vic Reynolds said at a news conference Wednesday.
Those ballots included one voter who signed the wrong part of the absentee oath envelope and another voter who signed the envelope for her spouse, Reynolds said. Neither instance was fraudulent.
“During the course of the audit, there were no fraudulent absentee ballots identified,” Reynolds said.
Investigators examined 10% of the roughly 150,000 mail-in ballots cast in Cobb for the Nov. 3 presidential election, marking a percentage able to verify with near-certainty the accuracy of the county’s signature-verification efforts, Reynolds added.
Absentee ballots in Georgia are verified once when a voter requests a ballot, then again on signature-bearing envelopes sent to county election boards. Those envelopes are separated from the absentee ballots to protect voters’ ballot selections and preserve voter privacy, according to state law.
The audit followed a complaint from a Cobb elections worker that processes for checking absentee signatures for the June 9 primary election seemed lax. State officials next plan to conduct a statewide study with the University of Georgia of signatures accompanying the roughly 1.3 million absentee ballots cast in the Nov. 3 election.
Raffensperger ordered the audit in part to boost confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s election system amid fraud claims from President Donald Trump and his allies that have injected doubt into the system ahead of the high-stakes U.S. Senate runoffs on Jan. 5.
Investigators in Raffensperger’s office are also working on about 130 complaints of alleged fraud in last month’s election, though state officials have repeatedly said they have found no evidence of any widespread fraud following two recounts and several tossed-out federal lawsuits.
“The Secretary of State’s office has always been focused on calling balls and strikes in elections,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “And in this case, three strikes against the voter fraud claims and they’re out.”
The audit’s results did not satisfy President Donald Trump, who lashed out at Raffensperger Wednesday on Twitter and called top-ranked Republicans in Georgia like Gov. Brian Kemp “a complete disaster” for not ordering a deeper mail-in signature audit.
Raffensperger has called on state lawmakers to change Georgia’s election laws during the upcoming 2021 legislative session by adding stricter voter ID requirements, eliminating mail-in voting without cause and giving state officials power to remove poor-performing county election managers.
Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
The four candidates in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff races have reeled in huge donations ahead of the Jan. 5 election, raising more than $340 million between them since mid-October.
The two Democratic contenders, Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, combined for the larger haul of roughly $210 million, while incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler together amassed $132 million.
The races have drawn intense national attention since the outcome will decide the balance of power in Washington, D.C. Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would hand Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and the White House following President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the Nov. 3 general election.
The roughly $342 million total for all four candidates adds to millions of dollars more in spending on campaign television ads, mailers, social media and door-knocking by dozens of outside groups that look to make the pair of Senate races among the most expensive in American history.
Ossoff, a Democrat who owns an investigative journalism company, collected nearly $107 million during the fundraising period running from Oct. 15 to Dec. 16. His opponent, Perdue, the Republican former corporate executive, raised about $68 million within the same time.
Warnock, the Democratic senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, raised more than $103 million over the two-month filing period compared to $64 million raised by his opponent Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman who earlier in the race loaned $23 million of her own money to her campaign.
Each candidate still has millions more to draw down for ads and other get-out-the-vote activities as the candidates enter the final week of campaigning in the Jan. 5 runoffs.
It’s not guaranteed the big fundraising figures can secure victory for any of the campaigns. Recent polls show the races as toss-ups and expert observers are not placing any bets on the outcomes.
Democrats feel momentum on their side after Georgia voters flipped the state for a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1992 in Biden’s win over President Donald Trump. Republicans are pushing to invigorate conservative voters to block Democratic control of the federal government.
The candidates have not been the only fundraising machines in recent weeks as several political action committees rack up tens of millions of dollars to bolster their preferred parties.
Notable are two committees backed on the one hand by former gubernatorial candidate and rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams, and on the other by former President George W. Bush’s campaign guru, Republican strategist Karl Rove.
Fair Fight, the group founded by Abrams, has amassed nearly $57 million since mid-October with nearly $24 million left to spend down the stretch for the Democratic contenders.
The Georgia Battleground Fund, overseen by the National Republican Senatorial Committee with Rove leading fundraiser efforts, has brought in more than $49 million since mid-October and has more than $15 million remaining.
The three-week early voting period for the Senate runoffs that began Dec. 14 wraps up later this week.
Clockwise: Jon Ossoff, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, Rev. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler are competing for Georgia’s two Senate seats in the runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Georgia’s U.S. senators wishing for a Christmas runoff gift may have gotten a lump of coal heading into the holiday break instead after plans for political back-patting for a newly passed COVID-19 relief package were demolished.
President Donald Trump is calling for increasing the stimulus checks in the legislation to $2,000 per American rather than the $600 included in the relief bill, handing the two Democratic contenders in the Senate runoff elections new ammunition to blast the Republican incumbents over their response to the pandemic.
“Georgia families can’t wait: $2,000 checks should be passed now,” said Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church, who is running against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
“$600 is a joke,” said Jon Ossoff, the owner of an investigative journalism company running as a Democrat against Republican Sen. David Perdue.
The remarks came after Trump called the $600 stimulus checks “a disgrace” on Tuesday night, less than a day after Congress passed the $900 billion COVID-19 package, which had been delayed for months as each party blamed the other for hobbling negotiations.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, pivoted Wednesday to highlight foreign aid dollars in the COVID-19 bill that Trump and Senate Republicans have criticized, rather than saying outright whether she would support the president’s call for $2,000 stimulus checks.
“I’ll certainly look at supporting it if it repurposes wasteful spending toward that,” Loeffler said at a Cobb County rally.
Amid the COVID-19 debate this week, her campaign’s allies attacked Warnock over police body-camera footage showing an altercation between him and his ex-wife, who claimed Warnock drove over her foot with a car during an argument. Warnock insists he did not actually run over his ex-wife’s foot.
Perdue has not said yet whether he supports increasing the stimulus checks. His campaign released a new television ad Tuesday praising the COVID-19 relief package and criticizing Ossoff for not backing it.
Before Trump’s comments, both Republican campaigns hailed the package passed this week as a victory, touting its extension of small-business loans, emergency funding for schools and an additional $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits.
“We will continue to take historic action to protect and rebuild our communities from this unprecedented crisis and we will not stop fighting for the people of Georgia,” Perdue and Loeffler said in a joint statement.
Congress won’t be back in session until next week after a move by House Democrats to power through the $2,000 stimulus checks on Thursday was blocked. Trump has not yet signed the COVID-19 relief package with the $600 checks that Congress sent to his desk on Monday.
Meanwhile, Trump has also vetoed a defense spending package over a move to rename military bases named after Confederate figures. Perdue and Loeffler had backed the defense bill, prompting pressure from Democrats to override the veto despite the Republicans’ staunch support for Trump.
Georgia Democratic leaders quickly seized on Trump’s intra-party curveballs to blast Loeffler and Perdue as the heated runoff races for their seats head down the final campaign stretch to the Jan. 5 election.
“$2,000 is literally the difference between people paying their bills right now, being put out on the street, or eating right now,” said U.S. Rep.-elect Nikema Williams of Atlanta, who currently chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia.
Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would hand Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and the White House for at least the next two years, following President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in last month’s presidential election. A win by either Republican incumbent would block that scenario.
The three-week early voting period for the Jan. 5 runoffs began last week.
