Biden offers boost to senator from Ga. by heading to Mass.
BOSTON — To help Democrats win their 51st Senate seat in a Georgia runoff election, President Joe Biden has traveled to ... Massachusetts?
Days before polls close Tuesday, Biden still has no plans to visit Georgia. Instead, he aimed to help Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection campaign from afar with appearances Friday at a Boston phone bank and fundraiser.
They mark the culmination of Biden’s supportfrom-a-distance strategy that he employed throughout the midterms and that his aides credit with helping his party beat expectations in key races.
Biden landed in Boston on Friday afternoon and was to join the phone bank run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to help Warnock’s campaign before appearing at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has spent millions of dollars to boost Warnock’s campaign over Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
The trip to New England 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 to help Sen. Warnock,” Biden declared Friday morning, before 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.”
Aides said the Boston trip was requested by Warnock’s campaign, and that Biden obliged, reflecting his promise to go wherever Democratic candidates wanted him in 2022.
“The president is willing to help Sen. 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 like 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 a distinct identity for voters frustrated by politics in Washington, his aides said. Meanwhile, he proved to be a boon to the candidacy of Sen.-elect John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and his appearances with more than a dozen House candidates helped Democrats keep Republicans to a narrow majority in the upcoming Congress.
While he wasn’t in those states in person, White House aides said, Biden was talking about the issues that were relevant in those races from afar — from bringing down health care costs to combating efforts to undermine election results.
“It didn’t matter where the president went; his message very much resonated,”
Jean-Pierre said, adding that Biden talked about the Democrats’ legislative achievements. “And that worked. Right? That worked.”
Warnock, throughout the campaign, has distanced himself from Biden. That’s a stark contrast to the runoff campaign after the 2020 election when Biden, as president-elect, came to the state with the Senate balance at stake and told Georgia voters they’d determine the success of his administration and agenda.
His aides have explained that Warnock knew from the time of his January 2021 runoff victory that he’d win reelection in a midterm only by attracting votes from Georgians inclined to back Republicans — and that was before generationally high inflation soared and Biden’s approval ratings tanked.
While in Boston, Biden also greeted Britain’s Prince William, who is in town for the awarding of the Earthshot Prize, a global competition aimed at tackling climate change.
The Prince of Wales shook hands with Biden and spoke quietly in the winter cold near the water outside of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library and Museum. He also met with Caroline Kennedy, the late president’s daughter.