By Philip Baillargeon
Two Senate runoffs will take place in Georgia this January, featuring Republican Kelly Loeffler, Democrat Raphael Warnock, Republican David Perdue, and Democrat Jon Ossoff (Left to Right)
Source: Justin Sullivan; Jessica McGowan; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call; Paras Griffin via Getty Images
In the election that keeps on giving, two final races will likely decide the fate of Joe Biden’s presidency. In a state the president elect won by 0.2%, two Senate seats remain undecided. Georgia election law states that the top two candidates in an election where no candidate reaches the 50% threshold will go to a runoff, in which only those two candidates will be on the ballot. In a crowded field vying for the seat left vacant by the resignation of Republican Senator Johnny Isakson due to health concerns, Democrat Raphael Warnock won a majority of votes (32.9%), but nowhere near that 50% threshold. On the same ballot, Republican Senator David Perdue narrowly missed that threshold with 49.7% of the vote, but his challenger Democrat Jon Ossoff only lags behind by 1.8%. In a runoff with a different electorate, this race is the greatest toss-up of toss-ups that we have seen this election cycle. Expect to see appearances by prominent leaders of both parties all across the state in the coming weeks (President Donald Trump has already held a rally in the state, with the election still one month away). Here are the candidates and their messaging that they hope will carry them to the Senate in January.
Republican Kelly Loeffler (Incumbent, Special Election): The name may seem familiar to you; most Americans recognize Loeffler for her fortune that is estimated to be in the range of $800 million, her involvement in a stock-dumping scandal after receiving an intelligence briefing on the coronavirus in late January, She was appointed by Republican Governor Bryan Kemp early this year to place the retiring Senator Isakson, and left her job at ICE (the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, which her husband owns) to become a Senator. She touts her “100% Trump Score”, a metric used by FiveThirtyEight to estimate a Congressperson’s propensity to vote with Trump based on his 2016 margin in their state. Loeffler has voted with Trump on every bill that has come to the floor, without question. Recent polling from SurveyUSA (a firm that predicted her vote share in the runoff with startling accuracy) shows her down seven points to Warnock. She will have to turn out a large number of Trump supporters, apathetic to their loss of the state on the presidential level and distrusting of election infrastructure, to make up this gap.
Democrat, Reverend Raphael Warnock (Challenger, Special Election): Reverend Raphael Warnock has never run for political office, but he is not a stranger to media attention. He holds a position once held by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a position which he has used to advocate for social justice. Born out of the Kayton Homes projects in Savannah and a graduate of the famous HBCU Morehouse College in Atlanta, Warnock is a true Georgia-made man. He has been attacked by opponents for his liberal policies, with the president and his opponent using terms like communist to describe his positions. Warnock is by no means an extremely progressive Democrat; he supports a public option (not Medicare-for-All), criminal justice reform aligned with most centrist Democrats, and more local issues concerning agriculture and education. With ample fundraising and an apparent lead in polling, Warnock seems to be the most favored out of all of these candidates to make it to D.C.
Republican David Perdue (Incumbent, Regular Election): The 70 year old Senator from the state of Georgia David Perdue is hoping to earn a second term after just missing the 50% threshold to win outright in November. However, his path to reelection may have gotten significantly more difficult since November. A former senior executive from companies like Reebok and Dollar General, Perdue shares a business background with Loeffler and was also mired in the trading scandal in late January. However, Perdue has also had more time to prove himself as an ally to President Trump; he was an early supporter, was vocal in getting the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and helped cut corporate taxes with the Republican tax bill in 2017. Another difference with Loeffler is he has voted in opposition to Trump a few times, which may allow him to claim allegiance to the president while also appealing to a few moderate Republicans or conservative Democrats (who are becoming increasingly rare, but still might sway the race in a close election). In the same SurveyUSA poll that has Loeffler down by seven points, Perdue trails his opponent by two points.
Democrat Jon Ossoff (Challenger, Regular Election): Less than half the age of his opponent, 33-year-old investigative journalist Jon Ossoff has his eyes on the U.S. Senate after a near miss in a 2017 special election for a contested Georgia House seat. His campaign focuses on government accountability, expanding healthcare access, and improving voting rights, an issue close to his heart as an intern of the late John Lewis. Perdue has refused to debate the young hopeful, and Ossoff has been relentless in attacking his opponent for being a symbol of corruption and lambasting him for refusing to have a dialogue on substantive issues. His opponents have tried to link him to more progressive members of the Democratic Party like AOC to scare off more moderate voters and have drawn attention to Ossoff’s substantive inheritance from his grandfather (even though Perdue himself is a multimillionaire) to scare off rural voters. Ossoff still has quite a lot of work to do; he ran behind Biden by around 100,000 votes and he’s going to need to run with or ahead of Biden to win a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic Senator in twenty years.
The Georgia Senate runoffs will be held on January 5th, 2021, but early voting will begin this month.
