SAVANNAH – U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock walked side-by-side through a throng of cheering volunteers to a staging ground for Democratic canvassers in a suburban strip mall.
Ossoff took the megaphone first, saying Warnock was kin to him – someone who “understands the struggles of ordinary people in this state and is working to lift up all of us.”
Warnock returned the favor, calling his colleague his “brother from another mother.”
“We are twins, you know,” Warnock laughed. “He just got all the hair.”
The scene Tuesday in Savannah could have been from any campaign event during the epic 2021 Senate runoffs, when the two formed a tag-team “bromance” which ended with a Democratic sweep of both offices that flipped control of the chamber.
But the appearance in Savannah marked the first time Ossoff joined Warnock for a large-scale in-person campaign event this election season, and it comes as the Democrat is locked in a neck-and-neck race against Republican Herschel Walker that seems increasingly likely to head to a Dec. 6 runoff.
Warnock is trying to rekindle the energy from the 2021 campaign that powered Democrats to close victories over GOP incumbents – and Ossoff, who doesn’t have to worry about his own reelection bid until 2026, has fresh legs for the final stretch.
“We believed. We worked strategically. We all did our part. And we made history,” Ossoff later told a group of Democratic activists. “Not only did we make history, we made a huge difference for our country.”
As he has throughout the campaign, Warnock drew a sharp contrast with Walker. But this time he specifically highlighted the Republican’s ties to U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia lawmaker who joined the former football player on the trail this week.
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
“My opponent is moving all over the state with one of the most divisive people in Congress. It didn’t work last time, it’s not going to work this time,” he said of Greene, who also campaigned with then-U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler in 2020.
With early voting turnout topping 1 million, some Democrats are holding out hope for an outright Warnock win. The senator urged the volunteers to “leave it all on the field” the next two weeks to avoid overtime.
“Even with this historic turnout, I am going to argue and submit to you today that is not high enough,” Warnock said. “The stakes are still higher than our turnout. Our turnout is high, but the stakes are even higher.”
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