Former President Barack Obama will return to Georgia Thursday to fire up voters for U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock ahead of Georgia’s runoff on Tuesday.
The visit marks the second time Obama will campaign in the Peach State this election cycle. Less than five weeks ago, thousands of people packed an Atlanta-area auditorium to see the nation’s first Black president stump with Warnock and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams.
Abrams lost to GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in the general election, but the neck-and-neck race between Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker was thrown into a runoff after neither candidate cleared the 50% benchmark needed to win outright. Vote totals showed Walker and Warnock were separated by less than 1 percentage point.
In addition to the rally, Obama also recorded an ad for the Warnock campaign, calling the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church “my friend.”
“There aren’t a lot of people in Washington like Rev. Warnock and that’s exactly why we need to send him back,” Obama said in the spot.
“This is going to be a close race, and we can’t afford to get it wrong,” he continued.
Obama isn’t the only member of the former first family working to get Warnock reelected. Michelle Obama took time out of her book tour to record a pair of robocalls urging voters to cast ballots.
Barack Obama has remained popular among Democrats since leaving office and is a powerful ally for Warnock, especially in Georgia’s large Black community. Blacks make up nearly one-third of Georgia’s population. Democrats routinely capture more than 90% of the Black electorate. Warnock’s challenge is to get them back out to vote.
Warnock has steered clear of President Joe Biden, who won Georgia in 2020 but whose approval rating in the state is 40%, according to a recent poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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