After securing the White House in the bitter campaign to oust President Donald Trump, Democrats’ next task may be even tougher: a double win in Senate races in historically red Georgia.
With President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda in his first two years in office at stake, and Republicans facing the risk of being locked out of power, the Jan. 5 contest is primed to break records for campaign spending and outside attention.
The unusual double runoff, triggered by the two Republican incumbents failing to secure the majority required last Tuesday, would normally not be a contest. It’s been two decades since Georgians last elected a Democrat to the Senate, and runoffs typically don’t spur high turnout, favoring the more established party.
The Senate now stands at 48-48 with counts still going on in North Carolina and Alaska, where the Republican incumbents are positioned to win. Democrats would need both Georgia seats to get to 50 in the Senate, which would give them control by virtue of Kamala Harris as vice president having the tie-breaking vote.
Historic Shift
Trump could try to energize Republican voters and keep them in the majority as a final consolation prize. But Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are by no means shoo-ins. For one thing, Biden is heading for victory in Georgia, the first time for any Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. And Democrat Stacey Abrams came tantalizingly close to winning the governorship in 2018, with much of that campaign infrastructure still in place.
What also gives Jon Ossoff, facing Perdue, and Raphael Warnock, going against Loeffler, encouragement is the underlying demographic trend that’s slowly shifting the state from solid GOP. Ranks of younger registered voters have surged by some 68% over the past four years, while those over 65 have stagnated.
Both parties will be pouring in resources.
“It will be absolutely nuts, with the fate of the Senate in our hands, with hundreds of millions of dollars coming in to create possibly the most expensive Senate races in history,” said Rick Dent, who served as an aide to the late Zell Miller, the last successful Democratic Senate candidate. “The perfect ending for a deranged year like 2020.”
Dent, who’s now a communications consultant and monitors state campaign media spending, is among those predicting total spending on the two Georgia races could hit a record $1 billion. More than $202 million was already spent by Tuesday, Dent estimated.
2021 Agenda
After Democrats retained a House majority, Senate control would offer a path to Biden’s pursuit of an expansive agenda, from addressing climate change to establishing federal codes for voting rights and a strengthened government role in health care, along with higher taxes on America’s wealthiest. That would especially be possible if Senate Democrats opted to scrap the filibuster rule that allows 40 senators to block legislation.
Perdue and Loeffler have already adopted a check-on-power message in their races. A win by at least one of the two would give current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell 51 votes and the ability to curtail more progressive policies and block key Biden nominations.
It could also play into the outlook for fiscal stimulus. While both Republicans and Democrats late last week called for a renewed push on that front, neither side indicated that it would budge. Democrats have pressed for a $2.4 trillion bill, while Senate Republicans have pushed a $500 billion, “targeted” package.
Read More: Biden’s Victory Makes Major Stimulus Unlikely Before January
Armies of out-of-state party operatives, volunteers and even celebrities are likely to head to Georgia, amid a blizzard of costly TV, radio and mail advertising, Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, predicted. Residents can expect plenty of door-to-door canvassing, she said.
While Republicans have dominated the Peach State for decades, and historically won in overtime contests, that may not be true this time, Gillespie said.
Biden held a lead of about 10,000 votes over Trump out of almost 5 million cast as of Sunday, with a recount possibly in store. Two years ago, Democrat Stacey Abrams was defeated by Brian Kemp by just 55,000 votes in the race for governor.
Nearly half of the state’s votes come from the Atlanta metropolitan region, and Democrats have been gaining in the diverse, fast-growing suburbs that ring the city. Tuesday’s results show Abrams’s campaign blueprint from 2018 remains intact, Gillespie said.
Voters in Georgia don’t register by party, but records over the past four years show greater expansion among groups more likely to support Democrats. The number of voters under age 35 is up 68% in that time, according to analysis from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.
Much of the expansion in younger residents has come from people moving into the Atlanta region. More new arrivals could play a role on Jan. 5, because residents have until 30 days before the election to register.
Ossoff, an executive at an investigative television-production company, narrowly lost a high-profile Atlanta-area House special election in 2017. In an ad released Saturday he said people want leaders in Washington to “bring us together” to get things done, in areas including infrastructure and combating the pandemic.
Perdue, running for a second term in office, by contrast appealed to voters to prevent a blue sweep of Washington.
Republican Message
“We win these two races, we save the Senate,” he tweeted on Saturday. “We have the Senate, we save the country. This is what is at stake.”
Loeffler, who was appointed by Governor Kemp last December following the retirement of Johnny Isakson for health reasons, had the same message as Perdue over the weekend.
“If we don’t win on January 5th, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren will gain control of the Senate and be able to fast-track their radical socialist agenda,” she said, referring to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and two liberal senators who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Perdue and Loeffler further tied themselves together with a joint statement on Monday calling for the resignation of a fellow Republican, Brad Raffensperger, the top Georgia official in charge of overseeing elections. Trump has claimed irregularities in Georgia ballots, without offering any evidence.
Attila Comparison
Secretary of State Raffensperger rejected the call and also said it’s unlikely that illegal votes will be found in numbers to overturn Biden’s lead. He said in a statement that Perdue and Loeffler should “start focusing on” keeping the Senate under Republican control.
Loeffler, who last Tuesday was competing in a 20-candidate race against both Warnock and a fellow Republican, had previously boasted in an ad that she was more conservative than Attila the Hun.
Warnock, a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, has emphasized that Loeffler was appointed, not elected by Georgians, and has deployed millions of dollars of her own money in the campaign. Loeffler is a wealthy former financial executive and co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream basketball team.
Warnock highlighted that McConnell is pouring money into the state “trying to swing this election too his favor.”
The McConnell-allied Senate Leadership Fund plowed about $35 million into the Perdue race before Tuesday.
“It makes a big difference who wins the two seats in Georgia,” McConnell said in an understated assessment on Friday.
It’s unclear how the absence of Trump or Biden on the top of the ballot in January might affect the race. Nor is it yet apparent whether either will take a personal role in the campaigning -- though Donald Trump Jr. has already been soliciting donations for Loeffler and Perdue, tweeting “Defend the Senate Majority.”
For Schumer, Georgia’s races mean the difference between joining Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a triumvirate progressing with an expansive agenda, or another two years of scrappy relations with McConnell.
“A Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate would be the biggest difference maker to help President-elect Biden deliver for working families across the country and in Georgia,” Schumer said a statement Saturday.
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