COLUMBUS — Vice President-elect Kamala Harris joined a parade of high-profile politicians rallying Georgia voters with a visit Monday urging Democrats to vote before the Christmas holiday for U.S. Senate Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
In her first visit to Georgia since Democrats flipped the state in November, Harris challenged voters to return to the polls in the record numbers that helped Joe Biden narrowly win here before the Jan. 5 runoffs for control of the U.S. Senate.
“As far as I’m concerned Georgia — Columbus — 2020 ain’t over until Jan. 5,” she said. “That’s when 2020 will be over. That’s when we’ll get this thing done. Because as you know, everything is at stake.”
Nearly 1.5 million Georgians have already cast ballots in the twin cliffhangers, and more than $450 million has been spent on TV ads promoting the Democrats or Republican U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Both parties are racing to encourage voters to cast their ballots early, with the holiday season looming and unpredictable weather coming in January. Democrats have zeroed in on some of their biggest strongholds, with events over the weekend in Gwinnett County, where early turnout has lagged behind other large counties.
Harris was set to hold an event earlier Monday in Lawrenceville, but that leg of the trip was canceled ahead of the vote later in the evening in Congress for a $900 billion coronavirus relief package. The vice president-elect, for now still a U.S. senator from California, reminded the crowd that she plans to vote yes.
In Columbus, hundreds of Democrats came together at a vast parking lot outside a former mill for a socially distanced drive-in rally, where horns honked in agreement as each speaker took the stage. Warnock took aim at Loeffler, his rival, for attacks depicting him as too radical for Georgia.
“Have you noticed I’m trying to have a substantive debate about the future of Georgia, and my opponent is trying to reduce this race to the kind of empty schoolyard insults made between children who aren’t thinking very carefully on the playground?” he said.
“I’m trying to have a debate -- and she’s engaged in name-calling. That’s all right. As we say in the South, ‘Bless her heart.’”
And Ossoff drew applause when he asked the crowd to focus beyond the Republican opponents and toward what Democrats could achieve with control of the U.S. Senate: expanded access to health care, new civil rights protections, more generous coronavirus stimulus relief.
“We have bigger and better things to discuss than David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — like where do we go from here,” Ossoff said. “Georgia has the power to decide where we go from here. We have the power to write the next chapter in American history.”
Harris’ trip comes less than a week after Biden rallied in Georgia, directly tying his plan to contain the coronavirus pandemic and juice the economy to whether Democrats can flip the state’s two U.S. Senate seats.
Some of the biggest Republican names have also rallied in Georgia. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley headlined a spate of events Sunday for the two incumbents, and Vice President Mike Pence has made four separate trips to the state since November.
President Donald Trump plans to return for the second time this runoff cycle on Jan. 4 — the day before the election — even as he continues to fume at state Republican leaders who have refused his calls to overturn November’s vote, saying that would be illegal under the Georgia Constitution.
Harris didn’t address Trump or his unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, which have been debunked by state Republican officials and rejected by courts at every level. Instead, she told Georgians that a vote for the Democrats will “impact people you will never meet” across the nation.
“What we did in November,” she said, “we can do again.”
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