Former President Barack Obama has weighed in on the multiparty, free-for-all special election for one of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats up for grabs this cycle, a race that could decide who controls the chamber in the next Congress.
Obama endorsed Democratic Ebenezer Baptist Church senior pastor Raphael Warnock on Friday, picking his favorite in the 21-candidate field competing for the final two years of retired Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.
Obama’s public support of Warnock, who’s also backed by the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, is being widely interpreted as a nudge to fellow Democrat Matt Lieberman, the son of 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, to drop out and help consolidate the Democratic vote before the Nov. 3 election and likely Jan. 5 runoff contest.
Polls consistently indicate that Lieberman is in fourth place behind the Republican-appointed incumbent, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, GOP Rep. Doug Collins, and Warnock. A New York Times and Siena College survey published Thursday found that Loeffler had 23% support to Collins and Warnock’s 19% apiece. Lieberman had 7% of the vote.
The Isakson-Loeffler seat will be decided by a runoff if no contender reaches a 50% support threshold in the fall. In that case, the first two finishers will proceed to the runoff.
Lieberman, who is facing increased pressure to suspend his campaign, tweeted a defense of his candidacy this week, arguing that Georgia is a purple state with “two equal-sized pools of voters.”
“The only way I am a threat to him [is] if we are virtually tied, all four of us,” Lieberman wrote of Warnock. “And in that event, it could be most accurately said that we are all an equal threat to each other with an equal chance to win.”
Obama’s last slate of endorsements before Election Day raises the profile of tight contests across the country. Democrats only need to gain three to four seats for a Senate majority for the next two years.
