Only one of the two seats was on the ballot Tuesday, with seven Democrats vying for the chance to face first-term Sen. David Perdue in the Nov. 3 general election. A second seat, held by appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), will be decided in November, with an early January runoff likely to follow.
With about 36 percent of precincts reporting statewide late Tuesday, filmmaker Jon Ossoff appeared to be in strong position to qualify for an Aug. 11 runoff with about 47 percent of the vote. Former Columbus mayor Teresa Tomlinson, business executive Sarah Riggs Amico, and lawyer Maya Dillard-Smith were in a close contest for the second runoff slot, with each earning between 10 and 15 percent. A candidate could claim the nomination outright and avoid the runoff by winning a majority of votes Tuesday.
Voters experienced significant obstacles in trying to cast their ballots, including long lines, polling places that didn’t open on time and new touch-screen machines that failed to work. Those issues threatened to delay vote-counting in metropolitan Atlanta and scattered other parts of the state well into Wednesday morning.
Democrats’ optimism is tempered by their recent history of falling short in Georgia despite high expectations, most recently in former state legislator Stacey Abrams’s narrow 2018 loss in her run for governor. But the candidates facing both Perdue and Loeffler argue the trend is unmistakable — including Ossoff, who suffered a narrow loss in a hard-fought 2017 House special election.
“That old conventional wisdom about Georgia is entirely wrong — Georgia will be the most competitive state in the country this year,” Ossoff said in an interview Tuesday, noting that statewide general elections have gotten progressively closer over the past six years. “Georgia is daily becoming younger and more diverse. The massive defection from Donald Trump’s GOP in the suburbs continues. And all of these monumental efforts of the last several years . . . have all built enduring infrastructure.”
Republicans themselves have sounded alarm bells about the race, citing internal polls, and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican” last month, reflecting the favorable environment for Democrats.
“Here’s the reality: The state of Georgia is in play,” Perdue said at an April 27 Women for Trump event, according to audio obtained by CNN. “The Democrats have made it that way.”
Republicans, who hold a 53-to-47 majority in the Senate, have grown fearful about losing control this November, with competitive seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina while Democrats are playing defense in Alabama. Of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs this fall, Republicans are defending 23 of them.
Perdue, meanwhile, has enjoyed a massive fundraising lead, with more than $9 million in his bank account as he faces nominal opposition in the Republican primary. He has had to bat away unfavorable headlines about stock sales that he made in the early weeks of the pandemic, arguing that they were part of his normal trading activity rather than an effort to use insider information to avoid massive losses.
Unlike Loeffler, who was cleared of possible criminal wrongdoing last month, he was not under serious federal law enforcement scrutiny.
The national parties are beginning to draw battle lines as the highly competitive Senate race takes shape. Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Georgia voters would opt for Perdue, an “original outsider” former business executive, over the Democratic nominee attached to a liberal national platform.
“Georgians recognize that today’s Democratic Party and the policies they rally around do not mesh with the values they hold dear,” he said.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokeswoman Helen Kalla, in turn, called Perdue a “weak incumbent” who will “face a strong Democratic challenger holding him accountable for his sketchy and unethical stock trading, his attacks on Social Security and Medicare, and his support for the lawsuit to erase health-care protections for preexisting conditions.”
Perdue spokeswoman Casey Black predicted that the incumbent would ultimately face Ossoff in the general election and previewed in a statement the campaign Perdue would wage against him.
“While our campaign has known this will be a competitive race from day one, we look forward to contrasting David Perdue’s record as a conservative outsider getting results for all Georgians with Ossoff’s history as an unaccomplished liberal insider,” she said.
Ossoff played down the possibility that he would be able to clear the field Tuesday and avoid a runoff, while also highlighting Perdue’s vulnerabilities in the general election.
“We are prepared to win a runoff in August and don’t believe that in any way that will impair the prospects for a victory in November,” he said.
Earlier this year, national Democrats appeared sheepish about their Senate chances in Georgia, following Abrams’s decision not to enter either race as well as early recruiting and fundraising struggles. Major national Democratic groups did not include Georgia among their initial fall advertising reservations, sending an early signal that Georgia was a long shot.
While that has not changed, Democratic strategists are keeping a close eye on key metrics in the state — none more so than voter registrations and absentee ballot data.
Since the 2018 election, hundreds of thousands of new voters have registered, and there is reason to believe they may trend Democratic. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found that more than 300,000 new voters registered in the state in 2019, representing a 3 percent increase in the state’s total number of voters. Nearly a third of those are under 35, and the relative proportion of black, Latino and Asian voters has risen since 2016, the analysis found.
In one encouraging sign for Democrats, about 45,000 more Georgia voters have applied for Democratic ballots in Tuesday’s primary than Republicans. While that partly reflects the competitiveness of the Senate race, there are also competitive Republican primaries across the state boosting GOP interest.
Senate candidates also have stepped up their fundraising. Ossoff outraised Perdue in the pre-primary period from April 1 through May 20, and Tomlinson has also shown the ability to raise enough money to compete.
Meanwhile, in the special election that won’t be contested until November, Republicans continue to face a messy intraparty struggle between Loeffler and Rep. Douglas A. Collins. Many Republicans fear the internecine battle could consume the party’s messaging against the eventual Democratic challenger.
The racial unrest of recent weeks has simultaneously given a prominent Democratic candidate, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a higher profile in the state. The pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Warnock has used his perch — one held by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — to call for a new focus on racial justice and civil rights, and his sermons and media appearances have in some cases translated into viral videos.
“It is the mutation of an old virus, covid-1619,” he said about the plague of police violence in one sermon, referring to the year slaves were first brought to America. “We’ve been trying to beat back this virus since 1619.”
Warnock’s campaign has not reported updated fundraising figures since April, but several prominent Democrats have looked to channel their national donor bases in his direction in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody.
Also on the ballot Tuesday are primaries with general-election implications, including in the suburban Atlanta district held by retiring Rep. Rob Woodall (R) that Democrats narrowly missed winning in 2018.
Republican candidates include business executive Lynne Homrich, physician Rich McCormick and state Sen. Renee Unterman, while Democrats are choosing whether to renominate Carolyn Bourdeaux, a Georgia State University professor who came within 433 votes of unseating Woodall. Among the five other candidates seeking the nomination are activist Nabilah Islam, state Sen. Zahra Karinshak and state Rep. Brenda Lopez Romero.
In South Carolina, state Rep. Nancy Mace won a four-way primary and will face freshman Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham in one of the House GOP’s top pickup opportunities. Mace, the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, raised the most money and garnered the most prominent endorsements, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).
In South Carolina’s Senate race, voters formalized a race between three-term Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R) and former state Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison. While the state is considered safe for Trump in the electoral college, Harrison’s strong fundraising — nearing $20 million for the cycle — has prompted some independent forecasters to move the race onto the national Senate battlefield.
Meanwhile, primary voters in Nevada will also pick Republican challengers for two other contested seats the party is targeting, facing Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford and Susie Lee.
