President-elect Joe Biden headlined a rally for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta Monday, on the eve of Tuesday’s crucial Senate runoffs. Democrats are hoping one final push from Biden will help get last-minute voters out to the polls Tuesday.
The president-elect’s trip to the state came the day after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Washington Post broke the news that President Donald Trump called Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger Saturday with the extraordinary demand to “find” enough votes in November’s election results to flip the state to Trump instead of Biden.
Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes and became the first Democrat to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.
A barrage of VIP’s are flooding the state for the Georgia Senate candidates in the last days of the runoff campaign. Vice President-elect Kamala
Harris appeared in Savannah Sunday, while Vice President Mike Pence was at Rock Springs Baptist Church in Milner Monday afternoon.
And President Donald Trump will be in Dalton Monday night at 9.
LIVE UPDATES:
5:03 - One last round of horns before the big day Tuesday. “Vote! Vote! Vote!” Biden calls out. “God bless you.”
5: 02 - Biden says he knows it’s been a long campaign, but he needs people to vote — safely — knock on doors and get other people the polls. “One day more!” Biden says. “Do it for the country you love. And I know you love this country.”
5:00 - Biden says despite the struggles with COVID and the economy, he’s never been more optimistic about America. “We have faced tougher times before, and we’ve always overcome.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
4:55 - By electing Warnock and Ossoff, Biden says, “you’ll be restoring hope and decency and honor for so many people who are struggling right now...you’ll break the gridlock that’s gripped Washington and this nation”
Speaking about Loeffler and Perdue, he says, “You have two senators who don’t think they work for you. They think they work for Trump.” As president, Biden says, “I don’t believe your senators will work for me. They’ll work for Georgia.”
4:50 - Biden takes the stage to loud peels of honking horns. He thanks Stacey Abrams. “Stacey, you’re changing Georgia.” And acknowledges Ossoff and Warnock as the next two U.S. senators from Georgia.
To the crowd: “Thank you for electing me and Kamala. We won. Three times here,” he laughs, referring to the state’s vote count, recount, and hand recount. “These recounts, you know what I mean? We should count them as three states. We won three times.”
4:20 - Jon Ossoff now up. He calls Warnock “my brother,” and mocks Loeffler and Sen. David Perdue, whoms he says have profited off the COVID-19 pandemic, as “like the Bonnie and Clyde” of American politics. “But we have bigger and better things to talk about than David and Kelly.”
Ossoff moves on to talk about the need to tackle the pandemic, reopen rural hospitals in Georgia, and build new clinics “in every corner of this state.”
“Health care is a human right and we will make it so in the United States of America.”
He warns that if Loeffler and Perdue stay in the Senate, “Mitch McConnell will try to do to Joe and Kamala exactly what he did to President Obama. But we have too much good work to do.”
He tells the crowd they have “just a few hours left.”
“Atlanta, say it with me, “Vote! Vote! Vote!”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
4:10 - Rev. Raphael Warnock takes the stage, telling the crowd about his family, including his mother, “who grew up in Waycross picking someone else’s cotton.” But, he says, she just “picked her son for United States Senator...only in America is that possible.”
Warnock talked about his plans as senator, including pushing for affordable health care, voting rights and civil rights.
He also said Sen. Kelly Loeffler has lied throughout the campaign about his own record, his church, and his character.
“But my mama told me it’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to,” Warnock said. “And on Tuesday, she can call me United States senator.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
3:45 - Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, one of Biden’s earliest supporters in Georgia, takes President Trump to task for calling for Georgia’s elections to be overturned. She also singles out Georgia’s two senators (“at least for one more day”) for not speaking out against Trump’s attacks on Georgia’s elections.
“Your silence will not protect you,” she says.
3:35 - Stacey Abrams takes the stage ahead of Biden. “I hear there’s some conversation going on about a call,” she says. “The only call I care about is the call on Jan. 5 for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.”
Abrams tells the crowd they need to make sure they vote and get their friends, frenemies, and ex’s to vote, too.
“The future is calling, Georgia. That’s the call we’re going to answer. That’s the only call that matters!”
3:30 - Ahead of Biden’s drive-in event in the shadow of the former Atlanta Braves’ baseball stadium, entertainer Jermaine Dupri and gospel singer Yolanda Adams get the crowd’s energy up.
“One of the places that was not supposed to change the world is about to change the world!” Adams told the crowd to honks and cheers.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
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