Democratic Georgia Senate candidate Jon Ossoff’s losing electoral record has an advantage: The filmmaker’s been vetted. The same can’t be said of fellow Democratic Senate contender, Rev. Raphael Warnock.
Ossoff and Warnock’s Jan. 5 runoffs will decide Senate control in the next Congress. If both of them win, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be able to break any 50-50 ties in the chamber.
Given Senate Republicans’ current two-seat edge, it seems commonsense that Ossoff and Warnock campaign together. The problem? Ossoff, who was bested in another high-profile race in 2017, is at risk of being sandbagged by political dirt that’s being heaped on Warnock.
Warnock, a preacher, survived relatively unscathed in the 21-person Nov. 3 special election for the remaining two years of retired Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. That’s because his chief conservative rivals, appointed Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and GOP Rep. Doug Collins, were preoccupied with each other.
But after Warnock secured 33% of the vote to Loeffler’s 26% and Collins’s 20%, he’s now operating under the full weight of the Republican establishment as GOP strategists and hundreds of millions of dollars bear down on Georgia. And that could hurt Ossoff, who’s already considered a weak candidate by Democratic insiders.
Warnock’s sermons at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s pulpit, since becoming senior pastor in 2005, have gifted Republicans with plenty of fodder.
In some of those sermons, Warnock has railed against police officers and Israel. In others, he’s expressed sympathy for Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro and Marxism. Warnock, 51, insists the video clips, including one in which he claims it’s impossible to “serve God and the military,” have been taken out of context.
Warnock has also been rendered an easy Republican target due to his connections to controversial political figures, such as 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Warnock, for instance, was needled during his debate against Loeffler on why Abrams’s refusal to concede to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in her cycle was different from President Trump’s this year. And former President Barack Obama’s reemergence for the elections and his book tour has reignited criticism over his erstwhile pastor, Wright. Warnock has vigorously defended Wright in the past and on the trail.
Dismissed police obstruction charges, brought after he intervened in a 2002 Maryland church-run camp physical child abuse investigation, and a messy divorce from former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms aide Ouleye Ndoye have added to the drama. To Ossoff’s detriment, according to University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.
“A standard Republican charge against Democrats is that the Democratic is a liberal, the Democrat is a socialist, and all that. The Warnock sermons provide a lot more fuel for that fire. We see all kinds of clips taken from his sermons. And there’s not that kind of a record for Ossoff,” he said.
The Georgia races are a turnout game. Early voting started Monday, and Georgians are on pace to take part at higher rates before Jan. 5 than they did before Nov. 3. That trend, though, may not last. And Republicans have historically shown up more for runoffs than Democrats.
Yet conventional political wisdom has been scrambled in 2020. The national attention, the fact there are two runoffs, President-elect Joe Biden’s victory at the national level, the possibility of Georgia voting for its first black senator, and greater access thanks to mail-in ballots could bring Democrats back to the polls in droves.
Bullock explained all that could help Ossoff, who’s pushing his own diversity as a Jewish politician running for office in the South.
The professor predicted, however, Warnock and Ossoff would earn roughly the same share of the vote.
“They probably made an assessment that, you know, ‘Politics are so polarized now that we might as well campaign together because we’re going to get assessed together,'” he said.
Biden made a similar argument when he campaigned for the pair in Atlanta on Tuesday and in a new advertisement launched Thursday.
“Let me be clear, I need Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the United States Senate to get this done,” he says in the recording.
Ossoff, 33, was defeated by former Republican Rep. Karen Handel when they competed in the 2017 special election for then-Trump administration Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s House seat. Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath then felled Handel, an ex-businesswoman and Georgia secretary of state, in their contest for north Atlanta and surrounding suburbs district during the 2018 midterms.
This cycle against sitting Republican Sen. David Perdue, Ossoff’s been criticized for his financial links to China and Qatar, as well as Hollywood. Endorsements from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for his positions on healthcare, the environment, guns, and criminal justice reform have been leveraged against him too.
Polling indicates both runoffs are extremely tight. Emerson College surveys released on Thursday had the Republicans leading by 3 percentage points. Fox News public opinion research published on Tuesday had the GOP incumbents ahead again but by only single points.
