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One More Time
SENATE CAMPAIGNS GEAR UP FOR ROUND TWO
By Ross Williams news@flagpole.com
H erschel Walker and Sen. Raphael
Warnock enjoyed a short break
from their hectic campaign sched
ules after the Nov. 8 election, then went
back on the roads and the airwaves hoping
to convince Georgians to vote for them in
the Dec. 6 runoff election.
So did the grassroots organizations that
aim to help them. The day after the election,
a group of leaders of progressive organiza
tions outlined their plans for
the coming political blitz. p
“What we’re doing for ^
the remainder of the week is =
O
we’re going to give Georgians 5;
a little bit of a break,” New 5
Georgia Project Action Fund g
CEO Kendra Cotton said.
“And we’re probably going to
take a little bit of a break. But
we plan to start our runoff
field program on [Nov. 14],
We’re implementing a layered
approach on doors, phones,
texts and other outreach to
retouch people we’ve already
engaged this year, especially
in high density areas.”
Cotton said people her
group reached out to during
the early vote were at least
three times more likely to
cast a ballot. “So we feel
quite confident that when we reach out to
those voters again, they’re going to show up
again,” she said.
This runoff will be all about getting loyal
voters back to the polls, said University of
Georgia political science professor Charles
Bullock. “The biggest challenge, and this will
be true for both Democrats and Republicans
as they move forward into this runoff, is to
get the people who voted for your person in
November to come back and vote again in
the second round,” he said.
“If the situation would be one in which
either Warnock or Walker could get exactly
the same number of votes in December as
they got yesterday, they probably would
win because of the drop-off that’s likely to
occur,” he added. “So it’s easier to mobilize
people who are already on your side or pro
spectively would be on your side than try to
have any converts.”
During the last runoff election that put
Warnock into office, the general election
was Nov. 3, 2020, and the runoff was Jan.
5, 2021. This time, the window will shrink
from nine weeks to four, which will put
pressure on both sides’ get-out-the-vote
strategies. Dates for early voting have not
been set, but will likely start around Nov.
28. “Because of the short timeframe, we’ll
be encouraging folks to get out and vote in
person if they’re able over absentee ballot
ing,” Cotton said.
Conventional wisdom says that
Republicans are more likely to show back
up in runoffs, but Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood
of the Asian American Advocacy Fund says
that’s based on outdated data. “Our orga
nizations were not around when some of
these other runoff elections happened,” she
said. “But we showed up in 2020 and then
the 2021 runoffs, and we will continue to
do that this December. We have been plan
ning for this runoff for a couple of weeks
now, and have an incredible ground game
prepared and ready to go soon as possible.
We hope to knock just as many doors as we
did in the general election in this short time
period.”
Mahmood said much of the focus will
likely be on densely populated metro
Atlanta counties like Gwinnett and Cobb
and north Fulton, and voters across the
entire state can expect to be contacted by
mail, phone or digital ads.
“I think the really key difference for
us this time around is to focus in on any
in-person early voting opportunities,
because we know that our communities do
show up early,” she said. “And we know that
absentee voting cannot be the main option
to turn out this time around, so we’re
looking forward to seeing how these early
voting dates pan out and to really plan tar
geted outreach so that we can get our com
munities out as early as possible and not let
anyone wait ‘til Dec. 6 to cast a ballot.”
Cotton said she hopes establishment
political groups will get on the same page.
“This cycle, we covered more ground than
we probably should have because candidate
campaigns, the major political parties and
more traditional organizations continually,
continually underinvest in taking the time
to engage in our communities, particu
larly in Black and brown voters and young
people, and they certainly don’t do it in
between these election cycles.”
Right-wing groups are also pledging to
up their ground game for the runoff. Anti
abortion organizations Susan B. Anthony
Pro-Life America and its partner Women
Speak Out PAC announced they will spend
at least $1 million in the
runoff and send members to
speak with potential Georgia
voters. “Our field team has
visited over 456,000 homes
in Georgia to expose Raphael
Warnock’s pro-abortion
extremism and support
Herschel Walker,” said SBA
Pro-Life America President
Marjorie Dannenfelser in a
statement. “We are proud to
back Herschel and will work
tirelessly to secure his victory
in the runoff.”
The groups said they had
contacted over 754,000
Georgia voters through
door-knocking, mail, digital
ads, phone calls and text
messages to educate them on
the candidates positions on
abortion. In October, Women
Speak Out PAC launched a $1M televi
sion ad buy labeling Warnock and Stacey
Abrams as extremists on the matter. “Our
ground team will continue to visit voters at
their homes to expose Warnock’s extrem
ism and urge them to elect Walker as their
champion in the U.S. Senate,” Dannenfelser
said. ©
This article originally appeared at georgiarecorder.
com.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (left) and Herschel Walker face off again Dec. 6 because neither won over 50% of the vote.
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6 FLAGPOLE.COM ■ NOVEMBER 16, 2022