Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia mark historic moment.
Outcome determines who controls chamber
MILNER, Ga. – Democrats and Republicans alike are casting Tuesday’s twin Georgia Senate runoffs in the starkest terms as voters prepare to decide which party controls the Senate to open President-elect Joe Biden’s tenure.
Republican David Perdue, who is fighting for a second term against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, said Monday that “the very future of our republic is on the line” as he addressed by telephone a megachurch crowd gathered to see Vice President Mike Pence.
Declaring the duty to vote “a calling from God,” Perdue said the outcome in Georgia “will determine the future of our country for maybe 50 to 100 years.”
Those watching from afar were no less dramatic.
“The people of Georgia have an opportunity to change the course of the nation’s history at this moment,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New Yorker who chairs the House Democratic Caucus.
Republicans need one seat to maintain Senate control and force Biden to contend with divided government. Democrats need a sweep for a 50-50 split that would make Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris, as the Senate’s presiding officer, the tiebreaking vote.
The stakes have drawn a flood of campaign spending measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with Trump and Biden making multiple trips to the state that finds itself newly atop
the nation’s list of battlegrounds. Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by about 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast in November.
Perdue, whose first Senate term expired Sunday, and Sen. Kelly Loeffler, an appointed senator trying to win her first election, have spent the two-month runoff blitz warning that a Democratic Senate would herald a “radical” and “dangerous” lurch to the left.
Democratic challengers Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have called Republicans obstructionists, pointing to how Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell stymied President Barack Obama, and insisted that recovering from the nation’s ability to confront the coronavirus pandemic hinges on a Democratic majority.
A closely divided Senate – with the
rules still requiring 60 votes to advance major bills – makes the prospects of sweeping legislation difficult regardless. But a Democratic Senate would at least assure Biden an easier path for top appointees, including judges, and legitimate consideration of his legislative agenda. A Senate led by Republicans and Mcconnell would almost certainly deny even an up-ordown vote on Biden’s most ambitious plans on health care, taxation and the environment.
More than 3 million Georgians already have voted. The last-minute push is focused on getting voters to the polls Tuesday. Democrats ran up a margin among 3.6 million early votes in the fall, but Republicans countered with an Election Day surge, especially in small towns and rural areas.