To boost Georgia’s Warnock, Biden is in ... Massachusetts
>> President Joe Biden hit the phones with fellow Democrats Friday for Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s runoff election. He fetched hot coffee for volunteers, too, and thanked them for their work. But this busy phone bank was nowhere near Georgia.
Days before Georgia polls close on Tuesday, Biden still has no plans to visit Warnock’s state. Instead, the president aimed on Friday to help Democrats land their 51st Senate seat from afar as he stopped by a union hall and headlined a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has spent millions of dollars to boost Warnock’s campaign against Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
It was the culmination of Biden’s support-from-adistance strategy that he employed throughout the midterm elections and that his aides credit with helping his party beat expectations in key races.
“This race in Georgia … it’s really, really critical,” Biden told members of the the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who were poring over voting lists. “This is a guy who needs our help.”
The trip north to help a candidate in the South had even Biden a little mixed up, at least in his comments. “I’m going to Georgia today,” he declared Friday morning, before quickly catching himself to say that he was headed north to do “a major fundraiser up in Boston today for our next and continued Senate candidate and senator.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., attended the phone bank and said she told Warnock that she’d do a fundraiser in her home state for him. “What you’re going to get is the best part — labor is going to be making calls for you in Georgia.”
Aides said the Boston trip was requested by Warnock’s campaign and Biden obliged, reflecting his promise to go wherever Democratic candidates wanted him in 2022.
“The president is willing to help Senator Warnock any way he can, however the senator wants him to get involved,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week. As often as not, that also meant not going where he was not wanted.
Ahead of the Nov. 8 midterms, Biden avoided wading into key Senate races in states such as Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire, where his approval ratings have trailed below his numbers nationally.
A 50-year veteran of Washington, Biden recognized that statewide candidates especially would seek to stake out distinct identities to face voters frustrated by politics in the capital city, his aides said.