A14 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALMONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020
Transition in WashingtonThe Runoffs
Senate is at stake.
“Very simply, you will decide
whether your children will grow
up in a socialist country or
whether they will grow up in a free
country,” Mr. Trump told the
crowd at a rally on Saturday in
Valdosta, Ga. “And I will tell you
this, socialist is just the beginning
for these people. These people
want to go further than socialism.
They want to go into a communis-
tic form of government.”
Mr. Trump was campaigning on
behalf of Senators David Perdue
and Kelly Loeffler, Republicans
who each have distinct political
brands that could pose a chal-
lenge for Democrats. It’s a chal-
lenge Democrats are seeking to
overcome, especially among sub-
urban voters, by keeping Mr.
Trump front and center.
Jon Ossoff, the Democratic can-
didate who finished about two per-
centage points behind Mr. Perdue,
which sent their race to a runoff,
makes this case at almost every
campaign stop: If the Senate
stays in Republican hands, it will
block the change Georgia voted
for when it elected Mr. Biden.
Carolyn Bourdeaux is the only
Democrat to flip a House district
this year. She won in Atlanta’s
northeast suburbs and, like Mr.
Biden, embraced her background
as an ideological moderate and bi-
partisan deal maker.
“The Biden effect was probably
split ticket voters," she said.
Runoffs, she said, are about
turnout, not party-crossing voters
throwing a president out.
“You get your people to vote,”
she said. “So one of the things you
need to have is a real, robust
grass-roots field operation.”
Ms. Bourdeaux’s win — and Mr.
Biden’s — cracked a code for Dem-
ocrats in the South, and highlights
the changing nature of Atlanta’s
suburban electorate, which has
helped the party succeed. It was
an effort ignited by neighborhood-
level organizers, accelerated by
an unpopular president, and car-
ried over the finish line because of
changes in Atlanta’s inner sub-
urbs and throughout the state’s
smaller cities, which showed sig-
nificant swings toward Mr. Biden.
In Atlanta, long known colloqui-
ally as the “Black Mecca” for its
concentration of Black wealth and
political power, the proportion of
white residents has steadily
grown. In the suburbs, Black resi-
dents who have moved outward
and a diverse collection of new ar-
rivals have fueled Democratic
change. That includes a growing
Latino population, an influx of
Asian-Americans, and college-ed-
ucated white voters who may
have supported Mr. Trump in 2016
but turned against him.
The result is a swing state
where the “typical” suburban vot-
er can take many forms. There’s
Kim Hall, a 56-year-old woman
who moved to suburban Cobb
County eight years ago from
Texas and attended a rally for Mr.
Ossoff in Kennesaw. And Ali Hos-
sain, a 63-year-old doctor who
brags about his children and cares
about the economy; he attended
an event for Mr. Ossoff in Decatur.
He’s also an immigrant from
Bangladesh who has begun or-
ganizing for state and national
candidates.
“Asian and South Asian — we’re
becoming big here,” Mr. Hossain
said. “This time was history.
When I went to early vote I saw
thousands of people in line. People
were fed up with Trump.”
In Henry County, about 30 miles
southeast of Atlanta, Mr. Biden
improved on his party’s perform-
ance in 2016 by nearly five times.
Four years ago, Hillary Clinton
bested Mr. Trump by four percent-
age points. In 2020, Mr. Biden won
by more than 20 points.
Michael Burns, chair of the
Henry County Democratic Party,
said he expected some drop-off in
interest from general election to
runoff. Instead, he’s been over-
whelmed with investment from
national groups and more local or-
ganizers than he knows what to do
with.
For the runoff, “we’ve had to
turn volunteers away,” Mr. Burns
said.
This is part of a larger shift, said
Robert Silverstein, a Democratic
political strategist who has
worked on several Georgia races.
Some assume suburban voters
are universally moderate and
white, not members of the party’s
diverse base or progressives. Mr.
Silverstein said for Democrats to
win the runoffs in January and
keep winning in places like Geor-
gia, they have to both energize
and persuade.
He noted that in 1992, when Bill
Clinton carried the state, more af-
fluent suburbs in Atlanta were
“blood red.” Today, he said, the co-alitions are vastly different.
Still, the patchwork that made
the 2020 Democratic coalition
possible is nascent and fragile and
could be defeated by an energized
Republican electorate. Both Dem-
ocratic Senate candidates will
have to improve on their showings
in November, when the Rev. Ra-
phael Warnock beat a split Repub-
lican field and Mr. Ossoff ran
firmly behind Mr. Biden.
Republicans are confident their
base will turn out, and that the
prospect of the unified Democrat-
ic government under Mr. Biden
would put off some conservatives
fearful of fiscal and cultural
change.
The location of their campaign
events are a tell of their priorities:
Republicans have largely steered
clear of the Atlanta metro region
to focus on increasing turnout in
more rural portions of the state.
On Saturday, both candidates ral-
lied with President Trump in Val-
dosta. The city, which is near Flor-
ida and has a large military and
Naval community, is geographi-
cally three hours from Atlanta but
even further in terms of pace and
culture.
Democrats are hoping Mr.
Trump’s involvement leads to a
backlash that helps them consoli-
date the suburban vote. Last
week, in a steady stream of public
events, Mr. Ossoff hammered the
Republican response to the co-
ronavirus pandemic to Asian-
American voters in Decatur, a city
in DeKalb County, near Atlanta.
During an event near a local uni-
versity in Cobb County, another
changing suburban region, he
called Mr. Perdue a coward for re-
fusing to debate him and has been
critical of Ms. Loeffler as well.
“We’re running against like theBonnie and Clyde of political cor-
ruption in America,” Mr. Ossoff
said.
Some Georgia Republicans
have privately expressed discom-
fort with Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Per-
due, who have hewed closely to
Mr. Trump and all but abandoned
outreach to the moderate center
in favor of an all-base turnout
strategy.Whit Ayres, a veteran Republi-
can pollster in Georgia, said Re-
publican erosion in the inner sub-
urbs — and to a lesser degree the
conservative exurbs — has
blunted the advantage Republi-
cans have enjoyed in runoff elec-
tions in the past. While white
evangelicals and religious conser-
vatives remain a core of the Re-
publican base, and make up a por-tion of the suburban electorate,
some Republicans worry such is-
sue-driven voters may be put off
by the Senators’ willingness to dip
into Trump-induced conspiracy
theories and misinformation.
Mr. Ayres said both sides have
hurdles to overcome before Janu-
ary. Republicans have a president
who is sowing discord within their
party and Democrats need to mo-
bilize communities that have typi-
cally sat out nonpresidential elec-
tions. They can’t, he said, count on
the same coalition that turned out
in November.
“Are these now permanent
Democratic voters? No, not at all,”
he said. “They’re in transition,
and they were put off in large part
by the conduct and behavior of the
President.”
Both Democratic candidates,
the state Democratic Party and
outside groups have put together
daily canvassing efforts to regis-
ter and mobilize voters — again.
Democrats have also taken notice
of polling that shows Mr. Ossoff
doing worse against Mr. Perdue
than Dr. Warnock is faring against
Ms. Loeffler.
Few expect the drop off to be so
significant that the parties will
split the Senate seats in the end.
Much more likely is two Demo-
cratic wins or two Republican
ones, a contest determined by
whether liberals can match an en-
ergized conservative electorate
that has often been insurmount-
able in lower turnout runoff elec-
tions in the state.
“Definitely demographics are
changing. And the white folks, the
higher educated voters in Fulton
and Cobb counties, they became
very anti-Trump very quickly,”
said Mr. Silverstein, the Demo-
cratic strategist. “My hope, as a
Democrat operative, is that they
remain that way. But that’s the
challenge here. There’s still a lot of
Republicans in these suburbs.”
Last week in Alpharetta, just
north of Atlanta, a “Stop the Steal”
protest underscored the state’s
messy political landscape, and
sent a mixed message to subur-
ban voters.
“We’re not going to vote on Jan.
5 on another machine made by
China,” said L. Lin Wood, the at-
torney who has become a conser-
vative hero in recent weeks by
echoing the president’s baseless
claims of voter fraud. He chal-
lenged Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeff-
ler to be more vocal about over-
turning the election.
At Mr. Ossoff’s event in Kenne-
saw, several of his supporters
found statements like Mr. Wood’s
worrying, and a sign that each
part of their state — the cities,
suburbs and rural areas — is
changing in ways that show Geor-
gians are further apart than ever.
Tamekia Bell, a 39-year-old who
moved back to the northwest sub-
urb of Smyrna after years in the
Washington area, said it’s up to
the voters who delivered for Mr.
Biden in November to deliver
again.
“That hope we feel,” Ms. Bell
said. “It won’t mean anything if
Biden gets in there and can’t do
anything.”Suburbs Tilted Georgia to Biden, but Democrats Face New Game for Senate
Gwinnett County, Ga., near Atlanta, was once a Republican stronghold but has trended Democratic in recent elections.AUDRA MELTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESCarolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia is the only Democrat to flip a
House district this year. She favors strong grass-roots efforts.JOHN BAZEMORE/ASSOCIATED PRESSFrom Page AATLANTA — In a televised de-
bate on Sunday night, Senator
Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republi-
can, declined to say that President
Trump had lost the election, argu-
ing instead that the president had
“every legal recourse available”
to pursue his baseless assertion
that the vote in Georgia was
rigged against him.
Ms. Loeffler, whose runoff race
is one of two in Georgia that will
determine control of the Senate on
Jan. 5, has emerged as a staunch
defender of Mr. Trump. She used
the debate to label her Democratic
opponent, the Rev. Raphael
Warnock, as a “radical liberal”
more than a dozen times over the
course of an hour.
Mr. Warnock criticized Ms.
Loeffler, one of the richest mem-
bers of the Senate, for making a
large number of stock trades after
she attended a briefing on the co-
ronavirus in January. Ms. Loeffler
did not answer directly when
asked whether members of Con-
gress should be barred from trad-
ing stocks.
“Look, what’s at stake here in
this election is the American
dream,” Ms. Loeffler said, calling
the question of her stock trades “a
left-wing media lie.” She added,
“This is an attack on every single
Georgian who gets up every day
to work hard to provide a better
life for their family.”
Ms. Loeffler’s trades and those
of two other senators were inves-
tigated by the Justice Depart-
ment, but the department an-
nounced in May that it would not
pursue insider trading charges
against them. A Senate Ethics
Committee investigation also
found no evidence of violations.
The debate came one day after
Mr. Trump held a rally in Georgia
in which he falsely claimed that he
had won the state — and after he
made a phone call to Gov. Brian
Kemp, asking him to call a special
session of the Republican-con-
trolled legislature so that lawmak-
ers could appoint new electors
who would subvert the will of the
state’s voters when the Electoral
College meets on Dec. 14.
In a statement on Sunday, Mr.
Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan,
both Republicans, said that a spe-
cial session would not be called in
Georgia, reiterating a position
they had taken previously. “Doing
this in order to select a separate
slate of presidential electors is not
an option that is allowed under
state or federal law,” they said.
Mr. Kemp and Mr. Duncan add-
ed that state law allows the legis-
lature only to “direct an alterna-
tive method for choosing presi-
dential electors if the election was
not able to be held on the date set
by federal law.”
Ms. Loeffler and Georgia’s
other Republican senator, David
Perdue, have both stuck by the
president, attending the rally with
him in Valdosta, Ga., on Saturday.
But prominent Republicans areworried that Mr. Trump’s airing of
his grievances about his loss in
the state might convince his sup-
porters that Georgia’s voting sys-
tem is indeed rigged and that they
should sit out the crucially impor-
tant runoff elections.
Losses by both Ms. Loeffler and
Mr. Perdue would hand control of
the Senate to the Democrats.
At the debate, Ms. Loeffler
hammered repeatedly on her
theme that Mr. Warnock — the
pastor at Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Atlanta, where the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once
preached — was dangerously out
of step with Georgia values. She
said that he had criticized the po-
lice from the pulpit and advocated
“socialism” and abortion rights.
Mr. Warnock also portrayedMs. Loeffler as being out of touch,
bringing up her stock trades and
criticizing her initial opposition to
Congress’s relief package for peo-
ple and businesses affected by the
coronavirus pandemic. (Ms.
Loeffler eventually voted for the
$2 trillion package in March.)
The debate came at the end of a
day made particularly tense by
Mr. Trump’s assertion, at his Sat-
urday night rally, that the presi-
dential election had been “rigged”
in Georgia, a state that two re-
counts have shown he lost. The
latest tally has him losing by
about 12,000 votes.
Georgia has already seen re-
markable Republican infighting
over Mr. Trump’s push to reverse
the results of the race. Violent
threats against elections workershave grown so problematic that a
top state elections official, Gabriel
Sterling, a Republican, last week
asked the president to check his
inflammatory language.
On Sunday morning, high-rank-
ing Georgia officials from Mr.
Trump’s own party pushed back,
yet again, against the president’s
bogus assertions of widespread
electoral fraud.
Secretary of State Brad Raf-
fensperger, a Republican who has
become one of the chief targets of
Mr. Trump’s wrath in recent days,
went on the ABC program “This
Week” and addressed the presi-
dent’s phone call to Mr. Kemp.
Mr. Raffensperger, who, like Mr.
Kemp, supported Mr. Trump in
the election, said that holding a
special session would amount to“nullifying the will of the people.”
“At the end of the day, the voice
of the people were spoken,” he
said. “I’m disappointed as a con-
servative Republican also.”
The other runoff race in Geor-
gia pits Mr. Perdue, a former cor-
porate executive, against Jon Os-
soff, a 33-year-old Democrat and
documentary filmmaker. Mr. Per-
due declined to attend a debate
with Mr. Ossoff on Sunday, which
resulted in a strange 30-minute
session in which Mr. Ossoff faced
off against an empty lectern.
Mr. Ossoff called Mr. Perdue a
“coward” for not debating and
criticized what he described as
the senator’s early understate-
ment of the threat posed by the
coronavirus. “The reason that we
are losing thousands of people
per day to this virus is because of
the arrogance of politicians like
David Perdue,” Mr. Ossoff said.
“So arrogant that he disregarded
public health expertise, and so ar-
rogant that he’s not with us here
today to answer questions.”
He added, “He believes the
Senate seat belongs to him.”
At one point in Ms. Loeffler’s
debate with Mr. Warnock, she
asked him about his arrest in 2002
for obstructing law enforcement
officials who were conducting a
child abuse investigation at a
summer camp in Maryland that
was affiliated with Mr. Warnock’s
church at the time.
Mr. Warnock responded that he
was “working at trying to make
sure that young people, who were
being questioned by law enforce-
ment, had the benefit of counsel, a
lawyer or a parent.” He added,
“The law enforcement officers ac-
tually later thanked me for my co-
operation and for helping them.”
The website PolitiFact and oth-
ers have noted that the charges
were dismissed by a judge after a
prosecutor said there had been a
“miscommunication” with Mr.
Warnock, who had been “very
helpful” with the investigation.In Debate, Loeffler
Won’t Acknowledge
Trump Lost Election
By RICHARD FAUSSET
and RICK ROJASPresident Trump has baselessly questioned the integrity of the presidential election in Georgia.DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMESRichard Fausset reported from At-
lanta, and Rick Rojas from Nash-
ville.