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But Georgia Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have tightly tailored their message to deal with health and economic crises, and Democrats plan to expand their field operations in Peach state.
“This is not about partisan politics,” Ossoff told CNN on Monday. “It is about human lives and human livelihoods that … are at stake. If we cannot put in place an effective response to this pandemic, more people will needlessly die, more people will needlessly lose their homes. home, their jobs and their businesses. “
While Republicans have historically done better in second-round races in Georgia, Democrats are hopeful that GOP participation will suffer without Trump leading the standings. Trump’s refusal to concede the race put Perdue and Loeffler in a tough spot, forcing them to defend the president’s efforts to fight a losing battle while also trying to present himself as a drag on Democratic control of Washington.
“I know the emotions are running high,” he wrote in a statement. “Politics are involved in everything right now.”
Meanwhile, Democrats face an internal debate over polls, tactics and messaging strategy after unexpected losses in House races and underperformance in Senate races. Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos announced Monday that she would not run for another term as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Howard Franklin, a Democratic strategist from Georgia, told CNN his party must expand its campaign in person, saying “a large contingent” of Democrats would not show up for a Zoom call, respond to a text from ” foreigners and volunteers ”or join a candidate’s telephone town hall.
“They have to be met exactly where they are,” Franklin said.
Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said Ossoff “is going to have to do a better job with outreach to black voters.” He said his group would do its part by sending waves of text messages and caravans of buses and vans to counties with large African-American populations to boost participation. Albright said Democrats have “the momentum” in the race now that black voters realize they have the power to make Georgia blue.
Georgia has not elected a Democratic senator for 20 years. But Democrats have new reasons for optimism, given Biden’s performance, suburban Atlanta’s rapid diversification, and their success in registering hundreds of thousands of new voters over the past two years. Fair Fight PAC, a voter registration group founded by former minority state leader Stacey Abrams, has announced that it has helped raise $ 7.2 million for candidates.
Abrams told CNN on Sunday that Ossoff and Warnock would have unprecedented resources for second-round races, and an effective closing message: “This is going to be the deciding factor in whether we have access to health care and to justice in the United States. “
But when asked about the issues dividing the Democratic Party – including judicial impeachment and statehood for Washington, DC and Puerto Rico – Warnock said the Republican Party “is trying to divide us again, and it is really sad “.
Jack Pandol, a spokesperson for the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said Warnock’s dodge was “an insult to Georgian voters.”
Loeffler alleged that Warnock did not respect law enforcement, noting that he said in a 2015 sermon after an officer in Ferguson, Missouri killed Michael Brown that some police had a “mentality of gangster and thug ”.
Warnock told Gray Television he spoke at memorial services for the police and honored those “who gave their lives in the line of duty.”
“You can both assert the dignity and importance of what law enforcement does, and at the same time hold police officers who engage in police brutality to account,” Warnock said.
South Carolina Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn on Sunday admitted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Republican effort to tie Democratic candidates to the leftist slogan “defund the police” had hurt Democrats in 2020. “We need to work on what makes progress, rather than what makes the headlines,” Clyburn said.
Some Republicans believe Loeffler and Perdue will benefit from the loss of the president, arguing that it could motivate Trump supporters frustrated with the outcome to vote against Warnock and Ossoff in order to prevent Democrats from controlling the House, Senate and White House .
“If you think the presidential election has been stolen, then vote Perdue and Loeffler to stop the Senate theft,” GOP strategist Brian Baker said.
Georgia Republican strategist Jay Williams told CNN Georgians are going to be motivated by the GOP’s message that “we must have the Senate or they will have free rein to do whatever they want”.
But he warned that a “really acrimonious” recount of the presidential race could benefit Democrats and “weigh down the Republicans’ message.”
CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.
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