ATLANTA (AP) – Georgians cast high final votes in elections on Tuesday to determine the balance of power in the new Congress, deciding elections to the Senate certainly shaping President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to carry out what could be the most progressive governance agenda in generations.
Republicans are united against Biden’s plans for health care, environmental protection and civil rights, but some feared that outgoing President Donald Trump’s brutal attempts to undermine the integrity of the country’s voting systems could discourage voters in Georgia.
State election officials reported a slight turnout Tuesday morning, including in the highly conservative northwest region where Trump held a rally Monday night to encourage GOP voters to take effect. Waiting times at polling stations were “almost non-existent,” averaging about a minute statewide, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.
More than 3 million Georgians voted early, either by mail or by personal vote in December. The robust early turnout was expected to benefit Democrats as it helped Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992 in November.
“This is the history unfolding in Georgia right now,” Jon Ossoff, one of Georgia’s two Democratic challengers, told reporters outside a polling station in Atlanta.
Republicans counted on a large turnout on Tuesday to increase their chances.
“You have to swarm it tomorrow,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters On Monday night, he downplayed the threat of fraud, even as he repeatedly stated that the November elections were plagued by deception that Republican officials, including his former attorney general and Georgia’s election chief, did not take place.
Democrats must win both senatorial elections to gain the Senate majority. In that scenario, the Senate would be split 50-50 evenly, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker for the Democrats.
The Democrats won a narrow majority in the House and White House in the November general election.
The January elections in Georgia, which were necessary because no senate candidate received the majority of the general election votes, were unique for many reasons, not least because the contenders essentially ran as teams.
One game featured Democrat Raphael Warnock, who serves as the senior pastor of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Warnock, 51, grew up in public housing and spent most of his adult life preaching in Baptist churches.
Warnock faced Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate by the Republican governor of the state a year ago. She’s only the second woman to represent Georgia in the Senate, although race has become more of a campaign focus. Loeffler and her allies have used fragments of Warnock’s sermons in the historic Black Church to label him as extreme. Dozens of religious and civil rights leaders have been pushed back.
In the other election, 71-year-old former businessman David Perdue, who held the Senate seat until his term of office officially expired on Sunday, opposed Democrat Ossoff, a former congressman and journalist. At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the youngest member of the Senate by election. He first rose to national prominence in 2017 during a failed House special election bid.
Even a closely divided Democratic Senate wouldn’t guarantee Biden all he wants, given the chamber rules that require 60 votes to move most major legislation. But if Democrats lose even one of Tuesday’s games, Biden would have little chance of any quick up-or-down votes on his most ambitious plans to expand government-backed health care, tackle race inequality and fight climate change. . A Republican-controlled senate would also create a rougher path for the choices of Biden’s cabinet and judicial nominees.
“Georgia, the whole nation is watching you,” Biden declared at his own meeting in Atlanta on Monday. “The power is literally in your hands.”
Despite fears among some Republicans that Trump’s baseless allegations of voter fraud could hold back turnout, the two GOP candidates wholeheartedly support him. Perdue said Tuesday that Trump would “naturally” earn credit if the Republicans won.
“What the president said last night is that even if that upsets you, you have to stand behind us and fight,” Perdue told “Fox & Friends.” “We will look back to this day if we do not vote and really regret the day we handed over the keys of the kingdom to the Democrats.”
Loeffler has pledged to join a small but growing number of GOP senators protesting the expected certification of Biden’s victory by Congress on Wednesday.
“We need to get to the bottom of what happened in this election,” Loeffler told reporters during his campaign in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. “There are too many unresolved, ongoing investigations.”
Warnock accused Loeffler of “aiding and encouraging” Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss.
“She wants to spend her time trying to hear your voice,” Warnock told supporters in the suburb of Marietta, north of Atlanta. “We know Joe Biden won Georgia. How many times do we have to count the votes? So what we need now is to help him. ”
Democrats have hammered Perdue and Loeffler, each of the richest members of the Senate, for personal stock trading after members of Congress received information about the emerging threats from COVID-19, while Trump and Republicans downplayed the pandemic. None of the transactions appear to violate the law or Senate ethics rules, but Warnock and Ossoff have portrayed the Republicans as self-serving and out of reach.
Perdue and Loeffler have responded by accusing the Democrats as sure to usher in a left-wing outbreak in national policy. Neither Warnock nor Ossoff is a socialist, as the Republicans claim. However, they support Biden’s agenda.
The run-offs in Georgia mark the formal finale to the turbulent 2020 election season and have drawn nearly $ 500 million in campaign spending into a once solid Republican state that is now a battleground. The outcome will help show whether the political coalition that sparked Biden’s victory was an anomaly against Trump or part of a new landscape.
Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes with about 12,000 of the 5 million votes cast in November.
Democratic success will likely depend on massive turnout among African-Americans, young voters, university-educated voters and women, all groups that Biden helped win Georgia. Republicans have focused on boosting their own base of white men and voters outside of metro Atlanta’s core.
In downtown Atlanta, Henry Dave Chambliss, 67, voted for the two Republicans. He said he wants Republicans to maintain control of the Senate to ensure that the upcoming Biden government doesn’t shift “ all the way to the left. ”
“I am quite successful and I know they will make more of my money,” said Chambliss. “I was born a Southern Democrat and I hope and pray that some moderate voices are heard and that things stay more in the middle of the road.”
Beverly McDaniel cast her vote on Tuesday morning during a light turnout in the gym of a community center in Atlanta. She voted for both Democrats, saying she believes they could better cope with the hardships caused by the coronavirus.
“Our kids are not full, full school as they should be and people don’t have jobs,” said McDaniel, a medical field worker. She said the virus is “taking over where we should have the government instead.”
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Haleluya Hadero and Angie Wang contributed from Atlanta.