‘We’ve learned our lesson’: Republicans target early vote in Georgia runoff election
Republicans are striving to bank a million votes before Christmas in the Georgia Senate runoff elections as a fail-safe against Democrats’ well-oiled absentee ballot campaign.
After President Donald Trump’s narrow loss of the state, GOP and conservative activists said they are making a concerted push to turn out voters now, even though the Jan. 5 election is still three weeks away.
Georgians can begin casting ballots at polling places on Monday, beginning what Tim Phillips, president of the conservative Americans for Prosperity, described as the “sweet spot” for the one million voters he projected Republicans need to turn out before the start of the holidays.
“Those 10 days up until Christmas are among the most important days of the campaign for us,” said Phillips.
While the early-vote period runs from Monday through Jan. 1, Republican activists said that they are concerned interest in the Senate races will taper off next week. Families will turn their attention to the holidays then, providing groups with a limited window of time in which they can turn out their supporters to vote for GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
“In Georgia we never know what the weather is going to be like Jan. 5, so vote as early as you can,” said Eric Johnson, an outside adviser to Loeffler’s campaign. “We’re up against a machine that goes door-to-door and harasses people that have absentee ballots to vote. They are better at grassroots efforts than Republicans are.”
Democrats pulled off a surprise victory in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, due in part to accumulating an insurmountable lead in votes by mail. They are seeking to repeat their success in the special Senate election that has led to mammoth spending by outside groups focused on motivating their core base of supporters. Their candidates are Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
At stake is the balance of power in Washington. Democrats will control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency if victorious. Republicans will maintain control of the Senate — and have a greater influence on President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda — if their candidates come out on top.
Trump campaigned this month for the GOP ticket and is expected to return to Georgia before voting concludes. Biden will stump for Democrats in Atlanta on Tuesday.
But it is a battery of outside groups that have been doing the heavy lifting to prepare for Monday’s early voting push.
Club for Growth is in the midst of a 10-day bus tour that runs through Dec. 21 and is aimed at generating enthusiasm among Republicans. The organization that advocates for fiscal conservatism plans to spend more than $10 million on its special election efforts.
It is paying more than 250 people to knock doors in the state, including during the holiday season, with a goal of reaching 1 million homes.
“We won’t do it on the holidays, but we’ll continue during that — what everybody’s thinking of is a down period — just because we can’t afford to not reach as many doors as possible,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said. “We’re hoping that the phenomena works, where people are at home more and maybe missing conversations.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List, said the early and intense focus on Georgia had caused her organization to shift its strategy of reaching voters, because it was concerned about diminishing returns.
Dannenfelser said SBA List, which plans to spend more than $4.1 million on the runoff election, decided to cut back on its digital and mail campaigns and put more money toward in-person communication at voters’ doors.
“The closer you get to the election, the more your message gets just swamped and flooded,” she said.
The group initially planned to knock 450,000 doors but Dannenfelser said it revised its goal to up to 700,000 homes.
“The whole political world is really trying to be on the A-est of A games that it has ever been,” she said. “Every single person is there and communicating in every single form that exists, because the stakes are so high.”
Some Republicans backed a legal fight to prevent Biden’s victory from being finalized. The party has enlisted 4,000 volunteers to monitor polling places and watch the vote count in Georgia during the runoff.
Johnson, the Loeffler adviser, indicated the GOP coordinated campaign would also encourage its supporters to vote by mail, even though many Trump supporters remain skeptical of the U.S. Postal Service.
“We’ve learned our lesson,” Johnson said. “There will be a lot more observers and oversight than there was on Nov. 3.”
McIntosh said the Club for Growth was emphasizing the convenience of voting early to less frequent GOP voters.
“We also tell voters, ‘Your neighbors will know whether or not you voted, so be sure to vote,’” McIntosh said. “There’s a sort of social pressure to come out.”
Democrats are also emphasizing the early voting period. Party officials have toured the state to remind people of their options. Warnock released a radio advertisement promoting the early voting date. And Ossoff has scheduled a 14-stop tour that runs through Saturday.
Dannenfelser said that every single day matters in the Senate competition that follows an intense presidential election and a string of national holidays. It is a time period in which the country often takes a break from politics, with government institutions going on recess until the week of the runoff election.
“But Georgia doesn’t get a break,” Dannenfelser said of this year’s unusual political cycle. “The whole country, and arguably, the world is looking at what the people of Georgia decide.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘We’ve learned our lesson’: Republicans target early vote in Georgia runoff election."
