Trump, Biden make Georgia runoff pitches

The current US president and the next US president campaigned in Georgia on Monday in two Senate runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate.

Republican President Donald Trump attended an evening rally for incumbent senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Dalton, a solidly conservative northwest Georgia area where turnout is lagging other parts of the state.

Democratic President-elect Joe Biden was in Atlanta in the late afternoon for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

He told an audience seated in around 500 parked cars near Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic stadium that they “have the power to decide Senate control and the fate of additional economic relief’’.

In acknowledging that the Georgia runoffs will decide control of the Senate and a large part of Democrats’ agenda, Biden said, “the whole nation is looking to you. One state can chart the course not just for the next four years, but for the next generation.”

He praised the Democratic candidates: “They’re talented, they’re principled, they]re qualified, they’re decent, they’re honorable.”

Departing from his prepared remarks, Biden criticized Trump, saying, “This administration has gotten off to a God-awful start. The president spends more time whining and complaining than doing something about the problem. I don’t know why he still wants the job; he doesn’t want to do the work.”

Warnock, Loeffler, Ossoff and Perdue all failed to win 50 percent of the vote on Nov 3 — forcing Tuesday’s runoff elections.

More than 3 million Georgians have voted in the election, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger expects more than 1 million more voters will go the polls on Tuesday.

Polls show the candidates in dead heats: RealClearPolitics polling averages show Warnock leading Loeffler by 1.8 percentage points and Ossoff with a 0.8 percent advantage over Perdue.

Earlier Monday, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke in support of Perdue and Loeffler.

Pence addressed concerns about voting irregularity in Georgia.

“I’ve actually heard some people say, ‘Just don’t vote.’ Men and women of Georgia, if you don’t vote, they win,” he said.

It has been Trump who has raised claims of voting irregularity in Georgia.

On Friday, the president said that the entire 2020 election in Georgia, including the two Senate races, was “illegal and invalid” but then urged his supporters a day later to “get ready to vote on Tuesday’’.

Trump again cast doubt on the legitimacy of the state’s election system in a phone call on Saturday when he pressured Raffensperger to change the state’s 2020 presidential results that gave Biden a win by almost 12,000 votes, the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since 1992.

He warned Raffensperger that “you’re going to have people just not voting” on Tuesday if he didn’t reverse the outcome.

Raffensperger rejected the appeal, telling Trump, “the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong”.

At a December rally in Valdosta, Georgia, Trump promoted the two GOP incumbents but spent much of his time airing his own grievances about his election defeat.

And on Monday, Trump signaled that he would use the campaign event to again say he didn’t lose to Biden in Georgia.

“How can you certify an election when the numbers being certified are verifiably WRONG. You will see the real numbers tonight during my speech,” he tweeted.

If Republicans win just one of the runoff races, they keep the Senate majority. If Democrats win both, they will ultimately control a 50-50 Senate, because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris can cast tie-breaking votes.

At stake for Democrats is Biden’s ability to pass legislation and to win Senate confirmation of administration officials and judges.

Republicans say their supporters typically vote in higher numbers than Democrats on Election Day and hope that Trump’s visit to Dalton will prod more conservatives to the polls.