The New York Times - USA (2020-11-15)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020 N 19

Transition in WashingtonThe Senate and the Campaigns

WASHINGTON — A first-term
senator in Georgia narrowly
bested his opponent, outrunning
his party’s standard-bearer only
to face voters again a few weeks
later under a quirky system that
briefly made the state the center
of the political universe after a
hard-fought presidential election.
The year was 1992, and Senator
Wyche Fowler Jr., a Democrat,
had amassed more votes than his
Republican opponent on Election
Day. But he lost his seat three
weeks later.
“Yes, I was disappointed, run-
ning six points ahead of the presi-
dent and being the only state in
the country that had this kind of
crazy system,” said Mr. Fowler,
now 80, looking back on a storied
runoff election 28 years ago after
Bill Clinton won the presidency.
Now that same “crazy system”
that overturned Mr. Fowler’s lead,
defeating a popular member of
Congress known for his folksy
stories, has once again seized the
attention of both parties. This
time, the scenario is playing out in
double: Not one but two incum-
bents, Senators David Perdue and
Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans,
are facing runoffs to keep their
seats. This time, the ramifications
are even more consequential.
Georgia’s runoffs, the vestige of
segregationist efforts to dilute
Black voting power, will deter-
mine control of the Senate in races
to be decided on Jan. 5. In the past,
such contests have heavily fa-
vored Republicans because of a
drop-off among Democratic vot-
ers, particularly African-Ameri-
cans, after the general election.
But those intimately involved in
the two previous Senate show-
downs say what happened before
is not necessarily predictive of the
future. Demographic and cultural
change has led to rapid shifts in
the state, and Democrats have
made concerted efforts to ener-
gize and turn out their voters,
work that paved the way for Presi-
dent-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s
strong showing in the state.
“Both times before, Republi-
cans really turned out and the
Democrats didn’t,” said Saxby
Chambliss, the former Republican
senator of Georgia who won a sec-

ond term in a 2008 runoff weeks after Barack Obama won the presidency. “This time around, I’m not so sure that is going to be the case. I have told my Republican col- leagues that Democrats are fired up going into the race, and with Bi- den winning Georgia, I assume that gives them momentum.” Both parties and their allied outside groups are already making huge investments in advertis- ing and grass-roots efforts and a panoply of voter-stirring surro- gates — perhaps including Mr. Bi- den and President Trump — will visit the state over the next two months in an intense effort to win. Vice President Mike Pence is making the trip this week. If Republicans can hold only one of the two seats, they will retain the Senate majority and control much of Mr. Biden’s agenda. If Democrats win both, they will gain a working majority in a 50- Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris empowered to break ties. The difference between a Republican-controlled Senate or a Democratic-run chamber is immense when it comes to what legislation would be considered and how nomina- tions would be handled. “I can’t ever recall a time when the difference between a 50- Senate and a 51-49 Senate was so stark,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Demo- crat.

Mr. Perdue, like Mr. Fowler, finished first in his re-election bid, with a narrow lead over his Demo- cratic challenger, Jon Ossoff. Ms. Loeffler, appointed last year to fill a vacancy, trailed her Democratic opponent, the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, a Black minister. The twin runoffs amount to an extraordinary accident of timing that came about because Mr. Per- due’s regularly scheduled re-election race coincided with a special election to finish the term of former Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired in 2019 for health reasons, creating the opening Ms. Loeffler was tapped to temporarily fill. But the unusual runoff rules in Georgia — which require a candidate to gain a majority of the vote to win, and automatically prompt a second contest between the top two vote-getters if no one does — are very much by design. They grew out of efforts by some white Georgians in the 1960s to keep control of the state’s political ap- paratus after the Supreme Court struck down a system that gave sparsely populated, heavily white rural counties more voting weight than dense urban areas that had large numbers of Black voters. A federal study published in 2007 on the fight for voting rights described how segregationist state legislators then turned to runoffs, which many believed would reduce the likelihood that Black voters would unite behind

one candidate to deliver a plural- ity victory while other candidates split the white vote. By requiring the winner to square off in a head- to-head race, backers of the plan were confident they could better control the outcomes. “It was just another form of ger- rymandering,” Mr. Fowler said. The special election offers a textbook example of why Republi- cans have wanted to retain the system. Mr. Warnock drew just under 33 percent of the vote, while Ms. Loeffler received just under 26 percent, and another Republi- can, Representative Doug Collins, captured just under 20 percent. With Mr. Collins now out of the pic- ture, Ms. Loeffler has the poten- tial to consolidate the Republican vote in a one-on-one contest. The racist origins of the runoff have faded into the background over the years, and defenders ar- gue that it is only fair to require a candidate to win at least half the state’s voters to be elected. In 1992, Mr. Fowler, a former city councilman for Atlanta and congressman considered an up- and-coming force in the Senate, was seeking his second term. He had won in 1986 by surprising a Republican, Mack Mattingly, who had been swept in on Ronald Rea- gan’s coattails in 1980. Mr. Fowler’s opponent this time was Paul Coverdell, a Republican and a low-key Atlanta businessman, state legislator and ally of the eld-

er George Bush, who had named him head of the Peace Corps. Mr. Clinton’s Southern roots helped him carry Georgia with 43 percent of the vote — the last Democrat to win Georgia before this year — while Mr. Fowler sur- passed Mr. Coverdell with 49. percent, besting him by 35, votes. But under Georgia’s unique law, it was not enough. The runoff rapidly escalated into a bitter clash. As Mr. Clinton prepared to move into the White House, Republicans saw an op- portunity to deliver him a quick blow by defeating Mr. Fowler. They pulled out the stops, pouring in money and sending Republican luminaries into Georgia by the planeload, including Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, who promised to turn over his Agriculture Commit- tee seat to Mr. Coverdell if he won. Mr. Fowler drew his own big- name visitor when the president- elect popped over from Little Rock, Ark., for joint appearances in Albany and Macon, where he played the saxophone with a high school band. He and Mr. Fowler raised clasped hands to celebrate what they anticipated as a coming victory. But Mr. Fowler had problems. It was going to be hard to re-create the enthusiasm of the presidential election with the voting finished and Mr. Clinton victorious. Mr. Fowler was also facing backlash for his vote the year before to

place Clarence Thomas on the Su- preme Court. Mr. Fowler remem- bered Justice Thomas, a Georgia native, had strong support from the state’s Black community, but was opposed by leading women’s groups because of his anti-abor- tion stance and accusations of sexual harassment. He said he believed that opposition cost him. In the runoff, held two days before Thanksgiving, almost one million fewer votes were cast than three weeks earlier and Mr. Fowler saw his initial lead vanish, losing to Mr. Coverdell by 16, votes — 50.6 percent to 49.4. It was a stinging defeat for Mr. Fowler but a welcome consolation prize for Republicans. “We were more successful in getting our people back than the other side was in getting their people back without a presidential race at the top of the ticket,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who was a consultant to Mr. Cov- erdell. But he cautioned that the dynamic could be vastly different this time around, given that Mr. Warnock, an African-American, is on the ballot. “Democrats have never had an African-American candidate to vote for at a time when control of the Senate is hanging in the bal- ance,” he said. “The circum- stances are clearly different. I don’t know if the outcome will be different.” Mr. Fowler agreed, noting that Black voters now make up a sig- nificantly larger share of Geor- gia’s electorate than when he ran. “Whether or not the Democrats can win this thing in the runoff, the demographics are much, much better now they were in 1992,” he said. “The numbers make it more likely than it would have been even six years ago. Either way, it is going to be whisper close.” Mr. Fowler said he shook off the loss fairly quickly, and in 1996, he became ambassador to Saudi Ara- bia, serving for five years until the election of George W. Bush. He said he had steered clear of politics over the years but was changing course in this election, relaying knowledge and ideas to Mr. Warnock and his campaign. “I have dusted off my campaign shoes,” Mr. Fowler said. “I think it is that important.”

Democrats in Georgia Runoffs Work to Defy History of G.O.P. Odds

By CARL HULSE

ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/GETTY IMAGES Jon Ossoff, far left, and the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, to Mr. Ossoff ’s left, both Georgia Democrats, are vying to defeat Senator Kelly Loeffler and Senator David Perdue, pictured behind her. At least one incumbent must win for Republicans to keep their Senate edge.

NICOLE CRAINE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON — It was an
election where Republican
charges of fictitious voter fraud
took center stage before, during
and after the count, backed by a
barrage of lawsuits intent on mak-
ing it harder to cast or tally votes.
Yet by its end, Americans had
cast ballots at a rate not seen in a
century. A Democrat was elected
president. And Republicans drew
surprising support from Black and
Latino voters — the very groups
the party historically targeted with
restrictive voting laws in state af-
ter state.
That a strategy Republicans
long relied on largely fell flat, ex-
perts say, can be explained by the
partisan divisions that drove
record turnout, by self-inflicted
wounds on the part of President
Trump and by a pandemic that
turned a gradual trend toward vot-
ing early — by mail or in person —
into a stampede.
Some of those factors may be
one-offs. But aspects of this elec-
tion — especially the shift from
Election Day voting to mail ballots,
and the party’s surprising gains
with some racial groups — raise
questions of whether the Republi-
can strategy of voter restrictions
served the party’s interests as it
once did. Also unclear is whether
the changes in how people voted
this year, in the middle of a pan-
demic, reflect long-term changes
pointing to higher turnouts or fac-
tors unique to the 2020 vote.
“Stereotypes die hard, and this
Republican idea that if more peo-
ple vote it benefits Democrats was
at some level more true in the
past,” said Norman Ornstein, a

scholar of American politics and democracy at the conservative- leaning American Enterprise In- stitute. “It was certainly true when Republicans believed that white working-class voters were Demo- crats. But it’s a ridiculous ster- eotype now.” Mr. Ornstein is a relentless critic of Mr. Trump and the Republican Party’s increasingly authoritarian bent. And nobody expects party leaders to quickly abandon a strategy that has served its interests from North Carolina to Texas to North Dakota. Republicans have argued that measures like voter identification laws, purges of voter rolls and limits on mail ballots are necessary to combat fraud, but ballot fraud is so rare that the rules often do little more than suppress legal turnout. Even so, such strat- egies have long been part of Amer- ican politics and are not going away. “As long as the Republican Party is going to depend on whiter, older and more rural electorate,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of Califor- nia, Irvine, “they’re going to make it harder for some people to regis- ter and vote.” Assertions of fraud, he said, fire up loyalists, increase political contributions and delegit- imize Democratic victories. “Already,” Dr. Hasen said, “Bi- den is going to come into office with millions of people believing falsely that he cheated his way into the presidency.” But the election also highlighted how trying to place limits on cast- ing a ballot might actually motivate voters to turn out. And even ignoring the toxic effects on democracy, some experts say, this was an election in which the re- sults suggested that the Republi- can voting playbook may no longer be as effective as before. Republicans in Texas outper- formed expectations this fall, gain- ing inroads with Latino voters who are among those hit hardest by the state’s tough voting restrictions, which include a strict voter ID law that is geared to Republican- friendly constituencies and se- verely limited absentee balloting options. That cast doubt on the idea that Republican success comes from making it harder for Democrats to vote, said Joe Straus, the Republican speaker of the State House of Representatives until 2019. That said, he added, the national party’s emphasis on discouraging voters in 2020 does not bode well for efforts to broaden its appeal. “Republicans ought to be the party

that is encouraging people to vote and winning elections on ideas,” he said. Mr. Trump’s fact-challenged cru- sade against voting by mail, which he variously labeled “a scam,” “corrupt” and “dangerous,” “was a real head-scratcher to me,” Mr. Straus said. “Many Republicans, including myself, benefited from mail-in voting over the years.” Nationally, Republicans have embraced absentee voting more than Democrats have. (And Mr. Trump himself has frequently voted absentee, including in this year’s Florida primary). This year, however, Republicans followed Mr. Trump’s lead in the general election and shied in droves from voting by mail. How many of them turned up at the polls later is open to debate. “I think Trump’s discouraging mail-in balloting during the campaign may well have cost him the election,” Mr. Hasen said. Beyond that, the president’s fearmongering spurred a flood of news reports that debunked his claims while teaching Democrats who did cast mail votes how to do it correctly. In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said a presidential tweet in May that falsely accused her of promoting absentee-ballot fraud turned into “a multi-front education effort from all sectors on how to vote absentee and why it’s reliable.” Other analysts suggest that the right’s courtroom campaign to constrain voting hindered Republi- cans as much as it helped. The most striking legal victory for Republicans came in Florida, where a federal appeals court up- held the Legislature’s requirement

that former felons pay fines and court costs to regain the right to vote. The ruling, undermining a referendum overwhelmingly passed by Florida voters, effec- tively barred hundreds of thou- sands of Floridians with criminal records from registering to cast ballots. Even that ruling, though, may have had a boomerang effect. Some analysts suggested that the publicity surrounding lawsuits and other Republican voter-security

moves, like the party’s pledge to deploy 50,000 poll watchers in bat- tleground states, actually worked in favor of Mr. Trump’s opponents. “One effect the pre-election liti- gation and rhetoric did have was motivating citizens to vote excep- tionally early,” said Barry Burden, who directs the Elections Re- search Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A key question is whether early voting will change American voters — and voting laws — in coming elections. The coronavirus pandemic turbocharged a shift away from Election Day voting to pre- election balloting, both in person and by mail. According to the United States Elections Project, 47.2 million Americans voted early in the 2016 general election, roughly half by mail and half in person. This year

that rocketed to 101.4 million — 65.5 million mail ballots and 35. million in-person votes. “The data shows in other states that when voters begin using the mail and voting early, they em- brace the convenience,” Ms. Ben- son said. “We’ll certainly see in future elections the majority of citizens voting early.” In many states, at least, voting by mail helped Democrats whose supporters had often faced hurdles like long lines at polling places. In suburban Atlanta, Carolyn Bour- deaux won a race for a previously Republican House seat by 10, votes in a state with a history of making in-person voting difficult. “We had to fight for every vote,” she said. Voting by mail proved crucial: In 2018, when she lost a race for the same seat by fewer than 500 votes, one third of all mail ballots in the state that were thrown out for problems like mis- matched signatures and missing addresses came from Gwinnett County, in her House district. Ms. Bourdeaux later led lawsuits that simplified voting absentee, standardized verification rules and allowed voters to correct mis- takes. This fall, only 0.1 percent of Gwinnett County mail ballots were rejected. In 2018, according to lawsuits at the time, the county’s rejec- tion rate was about six percent. Legal efforts to restrict mail balloting gained little traction this fall, but that could be temporary. Speaking on a podcast this past week, the former Republican gov- ernor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, said falsely that all major industri- alized nations have “gotten rid of or don’t have ballots by mail.” Cit- ing unspecified “shenanigans” in mail ballots this fall, he called for

the United States to outlaw absentee voting in all but limited circum- stances. David Wasserman, an analyst of the House of Representatives for the Cook Political Report, ques- tioned whether many Republican tactics denounced by voting-rights experts as suppression affected many votes this year. Nor was he certain that misfires like Mr. Trump’s assault on voting by mail meant much in the end. Some Texans were outraged by a court ruling limiting each county to a single location to drop off absentee ballots — a decision that gave millions of Houston voters one drop box in a county the size of Delaware. But voters still could mail ballots to election offices, he noted. “There are examples of places where Republicans have impeded voters’ ability to cast ballots,” he said. “But a dispassionate reading of what transpired last week was that this was a fairly smoothly run election in which voters had, in many cases, very short lines to cast ballots and many opportuni- ties to vote by mail.” Some on the right see Republi- can gains with Black and Latino voters as evidence that the Repub- lican message on fraud resonates more than voting rights advocates admit. In New Mexico’s Second Con- gressional District, “a Trump Re- publican retook the seat with a platform pushing voter integrity,” said Logan Churchwell, a spokes- man for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group focused on illegal voting. In Starr County, Texas, a poor, Hispanic area where authorities have cam- paigned against election irregular- ities, “Trump nearly split the vote in a county where the G.O.P. does- n’t really exist.” And some Republicans even suggested that the party might do better competing for Democratic- leaning voters than trying to dis- courage them. “We saw with Joe Biden’s nomi- nation that African-Americans are not exactly lefties, and we saw with the Latino vote in South Florida that an argument against social- ism can be very persuasive,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican campaign strategist. “So there are ave- nues to expand the Republican co- alition if we are savvy enough to take advantage of them.” He added: “That’s the part I don’t know. A lot of that is going to depend on how much of a sway Donald Trump retains over the Re- publican Party when he is no longer president.”

Limit Votes? The Right

May Need a New Tactic

By MICHAEL WINES

The 2020 election highlighted how attempts to restrict voters might actually motivate more of them to cast ballots.

ALYSSA SCHUKAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Record turnout raises

questions about a

long-used strategy.

T: TRAVEL

An article on Page 44 about the
artist Senga Nengudi misstates
the title of one of her works. It is
“Ceremony for Freeway Fets,” not
“Ceremony for Freeway Fetes.”

Errors are corrected during the press
run whenever possible, so some errors
noted here may not have appeared in
all editions.

Corrections

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The New York Times - USA (2020-11-15)

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