Biden to campaign in Georgia ahead of runoff elections
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to travel to Atlanta on Monday to campaign on behalf of two Democrats looking to flip control of the US Senate in Tuesday’s runoff elections.
Tuesday’s closely-watched races will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will affect the kind of legislation Biden would be able to pass through the chamber as president.
Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock are looking to defeat incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively. The elections were forced to runoffs because no candidate surpassed 50% of the vote in November.
If Ossoff and Warnock both win their races, the Senate would be tied 50-50 Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris able to act as a tie-breaking vote, therefore giving control of the chamber to Democrats.
Biden’s campaign stop in Georgia will happen the same day President Donald Trump is scheduled to headline a rally in Dalton, Georgia, to campaign for Perdue and Loeffler.
The appearances in the state will come one day after The Washington Post published an audio recording of a stunning one-hour phone call in which Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his loss to Biden. CNN also obtained an audio recording of the phone call.
During the call, Trump lambasted Raffensperger, who is also a Republican, for refusing to falsely say that Trump won the election in Georgia and repeatedly touted baseless claims of election fraud. Georgia recertified its presidential election results last month, and again found Biden as the winner following three counts of ballots.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris slammed Trump’s phone call as “a bald, bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the President of the United States,” while campaigning for Ossoff and Warnock in Savannah, Georgia, on Sunday.
Biden traveled to Georgia last month to campaign for Ossoff and Warnock. At a drive-in rally in Atlanta, Biden slammed Georgia’s Republican senators for siding with President Donald Trump in his efforts to undo the election results in Georgia.
The President-elect also previously appeared in a campaign ad urging Georgians to vote for Ossoff and Warnock, saying he needed the two Democrats in the Senate to pass legislation providing economic relief to Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic. Biden said in the ad he was prepared to sign a Covid-19 relief package on his first day in office that fully funds the public health response to the pandemic, ensures free Covid testing and vaccinations for all Americans and provides economic support to small businesses.
