Trump looms over Georgia’s high-stakes Senate races, worrying Republicans

14 min readDec 5, 2020

The president is scheduled to hold a rally in the state Saturday after having spent weeks attacking GOP elected officials.

President Donald Trump is ending his time in the White House as his bid for it began: waging a scorched-earth crusade against members of his own party.

With party control of the Senate hinging on a pair of runoff races in Georgia, Trump has spent the last few weeks trying to undermine confidence in an election he lost and attacking Republican officials here whom he once endorsed.

In interviews, Georgia Republicans projected confidence that Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud and his continued efforts to sow doubt about the integrity of Georgia’s electoral process won’t keep their voters home next month — simply because the stakes of the Jan. 5 runoff elections are so clear.

But some did reveal concerns, while others called for party unity. In a state where the split between Democratic- and Republican-aligned voters is as tight as it can be, they know that if even a small segment of Trump supporters — or ticket-splitters — opt out, victory is more difficult.

“This is by far the toughest race we will ever navigate,” said a Republican operative familiar with Sen. David Perdue’s re-election campaign. “It’s the most important, and it is the toughest.

“It’s a very straightforward path, but it’s a very windy road to get there,” this person added. “Right now, I would say, I have never seen the Republican Party more united in understanding what’s at stake and understanding what has to be done to stop it. … People have different priorities in the meantime of what they’re doing.”

Trump and some allies have been lobbing baseless claims of a rigged election across the country, zeroing in on Georgia after he lost the state to President-elect Joe Biden by fewer than 13,000 votes. Trump has saved some of his strongest ire for Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, and he has pushed them to take measures to overturn the election that the men have said would be illegal.

Trump tweeted Tuesday that if Kemp would simply handle November’s election as he wants — in effect disenfranchising a significant number of Democratic voters, many of whom are Black — he could “call off” the runoffs.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who is the state’s voting system implementation manager, rebuked Trump at a news conference Tuesday.

“It has to stop,” he said of the fury aimed at state officials, pointing to threats that Raffensperger, his family and other election workers have received. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language.”

Trump responded by calling the election “rigged” on Twitter and suggesting that state officials were engaged in a cover-up.

Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, has been vocal in dispelling the theories Trump and his allies have promoted in recent days. In an interview, he said he is “fearful” that the rhetoric “is negatively affecting these runoff races.”

“And I am strongly encouraging both the president and his team and Republicans in general and the senators to redirect their energy to getting re-elected and to not get caught up in this massive wave of misinformation, because that’s exactly what it is,” Duncan said. “It is a massive, unsubstantiated wave of misinformation. There’s not been any signs of systemic or organized fraud here in Georgia. And as the lieutenant governor of this state, I’m proud of that, regardless of the fact the person I voted for didn’t win.”

A call for party unity

Trump is scheduled to visit Georgia on Saturday to campaign for Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who are facing off against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively, after no candidate hit the 50 percent threshold last month.

State Republicans are hopeful that he will focus his message on getting the two elected, not on last month’s election. In an open letter shared Wednesday with NBC News, 18 former Georgia Republican leaders called for the party to come together around that goal.

Former Sen. Saxby Chambliss was one of the signatories. He said in an interview that the letter was a response to “comments coming in from several different camps about the fact that people ought to think about not voting on January 5th.”

“That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,” he said. “And then those of us that were talking about it, it occurred to us that we ought to do something about it.”

Chambliss said he wants Trump to cease his attacks on Kemp and Raffensperger, both of whom he defended as having followed the law. He said claims of widespread voter fraud “continue to be unsubstantiated.”

He said he expects Trump to explain why electing Perdue and Loeffler matters, particularly to those considering not voting.

“He needs to remind them that he’s got a legacy that he wants to see upheld,” Chambliss said.

Others echoed the sentiment.

“I want him to focus on the future and protecting the values that he served and ran on,” said Loeffler campaign adviser Eric Johnson, a former GOP leader in the state Senate, who signed the letter. “Where Trump may have been defeated, the Republicans down ballot did well. So to me, that says whether or not they like the president, they don’t like the left’s agenda.

“Regardless of what happens with election fraud, control the U.S. Senate — Republicans aren’t stupid,” he added. “They can do the math. They know 52 to 48 are better than 50–50.”

Jay Williams, a Georgia GOP strategist, said he doesn’t expect Republican voters to choose to “cut off our nose to spite our face.”

The only truly damaging thing Trump could say Saturday would be “stay home,” he added.

“I can’t tell you how many rank-and-file folks I talk to, and officials, that are just absolutely convinced that there’s this massive voter fraud going on,” he said. “So it obviously has some kind of effect. And I think him coming down here actually helps with alleviating that, unless he does say something crazy, but we’ll find out.”

‘I hope and pray that it stops immediately’

Republicans in the state have promoted the importance of keeping the Senate in GOP control to provide a check on a Democratic president. But the candidates themselves have sought to walk a fine line on that messaging, as it acknowledges that Trump will no longer be in the White House next year.

The delicacy of that position was on display last week, when a man interrupted Perdue at a campaign event to ask what he was “doing to help Donald Trump in this fraud case.”

The audience began cheering. Perdue pointed out that he had called for Raffensperger’s resignation and said he wanted to see additional lawsuits aimed at overturning the results.

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Meanwhile, influential conservatives like L. Lin Wood, a Georgia lawyer and Trump ally, advised supporters Wednesday not to vote in January.

Speaking at a rally, Wood said Loeffler and Perdue haven’t yet “earned your vote.”

“Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election, for God’s sake?” said Wood, who is seeking an injunction to stop the runoffs. “Fix it! You’ve got to fix it!”

Duncan said such rhetoric has alarmed him.

“Very intelligent, successful, accomplished individuals that I know in just everyday walk of life are getting hooked in to these random, one-off Twitter posts or Facebook posts that takes anybody 10 seconds to debunk, and they’re getting sucked into it,” he said.” And I don’t know where this is coming from. I don’t know where the energy’s at, but I hope and pray that it stops immediately.”

Some on the left have even seized on that energy. Billboards paid for by the Really American PAC reading “Perdue/Loeffler didn’t deliver for Trump, DON’T Deliver for them” began appearing across the state recently.

Justin Horwitz, the group’s founder and president, said that nine such billboards are up and that the group plans to place at least 20, all in areas that voted for Trump in excess of 70 percent last month.

A Georgia Republican strategist said: “It’s Democrats doing it as if they are right-wing nuts. It’s brilliant. It’s brilliant because it’s exactly what Lin Wood would say.”

The strategist said Trump “can decide if he wants to be a plus or minus” during his trip to the state, adding, “He has the ability without a doubt to come down here and blow this thing up.”

Some Republicans are ready to turn the page

Voters interviewed in Forsyth County, northeast of Atlanta, where Trump won about 66 percent of the vote, said they would be voting for Perdue and Loeffler.

Ken Prevette, a Republican, said that he didn’t think much of Perdue and Loeffler but that he believes the country needs checks and balances and that a unified government wouldn’t be good. He said he “reluctantly” voted for Trump, praising some of his efforts while condemning him as a human being.

“His inability to recognize that he’s not as great as he thinks he is cost him the election,” Prevette said. “And so now this Senate election, to me, is pretty important.”

Prevette added that it’s well past time for Trump to accept the election results.

“I thought it showed a lack of class on Stacey Abrams when she refused to acknowledge that she had lost the election for governor last time,” he said. “And I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t say I feel the same way about Trump and what he’s done. I understand that it was a very close election, but I think his ego got in the way of the reality.”

Runoffs in Georgia have historically favored Republicans. But with the increased national exposure, a flood of donor money, increased efforts to register voters and a president who is firing at his own side, Republicans acknowledged that this time could be different.

“I’ve been doing this 20 years,” said Williams, one of the strategists. “I’ve never seen something insane like this.”

Trump posted a tweet Wednesday that could help calm some Republican anxieties.

“Will be going to Georgia for a big Trump Rally in support of our two great Republican Senators, David and Kelly,” he said. “They are fantastic people who love their Country and love their State. We must work hard and be sure they win.”

Former President Barack Obama and Vice President Mike Pence held dueling rallies courting Georgia voters on Friday, seeking to drum up support in the battle for control of the Senate.

Obama joined 2018 gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and the two Democratic Senate candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, for a virtual rally Friday afternoon. At roughly the same time, Pence joined Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., for an in-person rally in Savannah.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., was slated to attend as well but changed plans after a campaign staffer, Harrison Deal, died in a car accident, she announced in a statement.

President Donald Trump will hold a rally on Saturday in Valdosta with the two Republicans in the runoff, which is about a month away.

“You are now, once again, the center of our civic universe because the special election in Georgia is going to determine, ultimately, the course of the Biden presidency and whether Joe Biden ad Kamala Harris can deliver legislatively all the commitments they’ve made,” Obama said.

Currently, the Senate partisan divide stands at 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats. If Ossoff and Warnock both win their races, the Senate will be under Democratic control because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would serve as the tie-breaking vote. If Republicans win just one of the Georgia seats, then the GOP will retain control of the chamber.

Obama pointed to his struggles with Republican senators during his presidency, saying control of the Senate “really matters,” adding that “the promise” of the upcoming administration “rests in part on their ability to have a cooperative posture with Congress.”

“Anybody listening right now, you need to realize this is not just about Georgia,” Obama said. “This is about America — this is about the world. And it’s within your power to have an impact.”

Campaigning in the state was sparse this week with the Republicans in Washington, D.C., for Senate work and the Democrats, for the most part, steering clear of in-person campaigning because of the worsening Covid-19 pandemic.

One million Georgians have already applied for absentee ballots for the upcoming election as of Friday, as Abrams noted. Abrams, Ossoff and Warnock all pushed for the roughly 23,000 Georgians who will have turned 18 after the November election but before the runoffs to register to vote.

“It’s time for all of us to get ready,” Warnock said. “To put our shoes on. The battle is not over. We’ve got a race in front of us and we intend to win.”

Additionally, Obama and the candidates took aim at Perdue and Loeffler over their recent stock-trading controversies. Obama said that during the pandemic they “were first and foremost worried about their stock portfolio.”

“Goodness gracious,” he added. “That alone should tell you something. Somehow we’ve become inured to this kind of stuff.”

Pence appeared earlier Friday alongside Perdue and Loeffler at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Each person sat more than six feet away from each other and was masked for the event, during which Pence called the Republican senators “leaders” and “stalwart partners in our national response” to the coronavirus. Pence also thanked them for “their consistent steady support.”

At the Savannah rally, Pence carefully threaded the needle, not acknowledging Biden’s victory but stressing the need to maintain a Republican Senate majority.

“I’m here because I stand with Donald Trump,” Pence said, “and I’m here because we stand with Sen. David Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler.”

The vice president said “we’re going to keep fighting until ever legal vote is counted” and “every illegal vote is thrown out.”

Two Georgia recounts have so far reaffirmed Biden’s victory in the state, which was by less than 13,000 votes.

“And we will never stop fighting to make America great again,” Pence continued. “That’s why we need David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler back in the majority in the United States Senate.”

He also tried to assure the crowd that — despite what the Trump campaign has been arguing in court — the vote in Georgia would be secure.

“We’re on them. We’re watching,” Pence said, urging voters to ignore calls to sit the election out. “We can fight for our president and more Republicans in the Senate at the same time.”

The Republicans have found themselves in a bind. Trump’s refusal to accept the election results limits their ability to deliver one of their most effective messages, that keeping the Senate under Republican control will serve as a check on President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.

Further complicating and undermining some Republican efforts, Trump allies have pushed for voters not to cast ballots in the runoff election in protest of what they say was a “rigged” general election. Neither Trump nor his allies have provided any proof of voter fraud and the state’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has vehemently defended the integrity of the election.

The president has repeatedly taken aim at Raffensperger and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who he has suggested is not doing enough to help his cause.

In a tip of the hat to reality, Pence also told the crowd they needed to vote for the two Republicans because the “Senate majority could be the last line of defense” against Democrats’ agenda.

“Georgia needs to hold the line,” Pence said.

The vice president also offered prayers and condolences for the Loeffler staffer who died, describing him as “a truly wonderful young man.”

Democrats know this year’s election was as much about President Donald Trump as anything else, but without him on the ballot, they are working to find other ways to keep voters engaged.

In Georgia, party officials, labor leaders and progressive activists are mounting an aggressive campaign to keep their base mobilized and register new voters ahead of a Dec. 7 deadline before voters here return to the ballot box on Jan. 5.

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This historically conservative state will host two runoffs for Senate seats on Jan. 5, NBC News projects. Republican Kelly Loeffler will face Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock. David Perdue, the other GOP incumbent, will Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Democrats are doing what they can to stoke enthusiasm in the hope of winning both races, which would give them control of the chamber.

They recognize they have an uphill climb in the high-stakes contests given their poor record in overtime elections here. Georgia’s last Senate runoff was in 2008, and the Republican candidate, Saxby Chambliss, won by 15 percentage points.

“This is a very different state than 2008. We’ve been working really hard. We have registered hundreds of thousands of voters in the state,” Warnock, a preacher at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, told reporters Thursday. “With record turnout this time around, I think that people understand what’s at stake. They’re going to rise up one more time.”’

Democrats are emphasizing the need for Senate control as a way to give President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda a chance and prevent a Republican blockade. Warnock and Ossoff have held health care-themed events about protecting coverage under the Affordable Care Act, which their Republican rivals oppose. They say it’s time to elect a government that will get Covid-19 under control.

“This election with Donald Trump has awakened people,” said Tracey Thornhill, the president of Local 1644 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Atlanta. “Where would we be in another four years? With the help of Perdue and Loeffler, he would send us straight back to slave ships.”

‘We can’t be complacent’

Many credit Stacey Abrams — the former state House minority leader who fell short of winning the governorship in 2018 and founded the voting rights group Fair Fight — with putting Democrats on the brink of victory.

An Ossoff official said that after the general election, his campaign’s volunteers have made more than 70,000 calls to Georgia voters, with 60,000 hours of shifts among 21,900 volunteers scheduled for the next two weeks. The official said that Ossoff’s campaign has brought in a new team to register voters before the deadline and that it is reaching out to thousands of young Georgians who became eligible after the Nov. 3 contest.

Warnock was flanked by labor leaders, who are providing the ground organization for Democrats and vowed to redouble their efforts to deliver the state for Warnock and Ossoff as Biden leads by about 14,000 votes ahead of a recount.

“We’re going to be contacting every union member in the state of Georgia. It’s going to be nonstop until January,” said James Williams, the president of the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council. “Our members are going to be tired of us contacting them, but complacency isn’t an issue for us. We’re going to get them out.”

Unions are advocating for Biden-backed ideas like raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and adding a public insurance option to the Affordable Care Act exchanges. The proposals and others would have a chance in a Democratic-led Congress, but they could be dead on arrival in a Senate controlled by Republicans.

Republicans, for their part, warn that a Democratic Senate would pave the way for “socialism,” hoping to capitalize on anger over losing the presidency.

“There are very influential politicians and figures in the Democratic Party whose ideas are far outside the mainstream of what our country wants,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told reporters Wednesday after he co-hosted a campaign event with Loeffler in a suburb of Atlanta. “And if they control the Senate, they’ll be in a position to influence some of those.”

Control of the Senate was a theme Tuesday of a rally for Ossoff in Atlanta, which boasts a booming metropolitan area that is home to about two-thirds of the state’s population and has trended toward Democrats in recent years.

“We can’t be complacent,” said Jennifer Jordan, a state senator who represents Atlanta. “If we don’t vote for Warnock and Ossoff, we’re just going to have another situation where [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell is doing everything he can to make sure the president fails.”

Trump looms over Georgia’s high-stakes Senate races, worrying Republicans

A call for party unity

‘I hope and pray that it stops immediately’

Some Republicans are ready to turn the page

‘We can’t be complacent’

Written by Pasoye