November 30th, 2022 – Georgia Senate Runoff

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[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. As Texas slouches from the election toward the legislative session. We’re gonna take a break from talking about Texas today and have a look at the last gasp of the national election season, and that’s the runoff election for a US Senate seat in Georgia between incumbent [00:01:00] Democrat, Rafael Warnock and his Republican challenger, the former football running back Herschel Walker.

[00:01:06] Jim Henson: There is a Texas angle here, which I, I think we’ll touch. Um, but for this conversation, I’m really happy to be joined by Greg Bluestein. Greg is, uh, a political reporter and author who covers Georgia politics for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. And as the author flipped How Georgia turned purple and broke the monopoly on Republican power.

[00:01:26] Jim Henson: Greg has been all over this election in Georgia, has written prolifically about this race and, and the saga of the Georgia Senate seats wri large. He’s also been a regular presence on cable news for the last couple of cycles at least he’s a busy guy and I’m really happy to have him on the podcast. So thanks a lot and welcome Greg.

[00:01:46] Jim Henson: Thank you so much for having me. So let’s start, for those that have not been following this races that closely, and I think that if they’re, they’ve gotten this far, they probably are. But Greg, give us, give us a quick version of how we got to where we are, uh, as this runoff [00:02:00] unfolds. Uh,

[00:02:01] Greg Bluestein: Well, first of all, Georgia’s one of the few states that has a runoff rule in the first place, and that basically says that if no candidate gets a majority of the votes, that’s 50% plus one, there is a runoff period.

[00:02:11] Greg Bluestein: Um, this is no stranger to a national audience either because Georgia had runoffs in after the 2020 election. They resulted in the victories of both Senator Warnock and John Ossoff that flipped control of the chamber and basically allowed President Joe Biden. Um, Pursue his policy priorities the first two years of his presidential term.

[00:02:31] Greg Bluestein: Um, but more specifically how we got to, uh, match up between Senator Rafael Warnock and Herschel Walker. Uh, basically, you know, in an election cycle after Democrats, uh, sort of shocked the world. In 2020, president Joe Biden becomes the first democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1982. And you had, um, oof and warnock flip the control of the Senate, uh, Republicans kind of restored order, uh, to a degree [00:03:00] in 2022.

[00:03:00] Greg Bluestein: Every Republican candidate, including Governor Bryan Kemp, won their statewide elections except for Herschel Walker. And the reason why is that 200,000 fewer voters. Um, Herschel Walker and Brian Kemp. So basically there was 200,000 split ticket voters that either, uh, uh, backed Brian Kemp and, and also voted for Rafael Warnock or backed Brian Kemp and just withheld their vote for anyone at all.

[00:03:28] Greg Bluestein: And that was the decisive factor here. And those split ticket voters will continue to shape this race going into, uh, December.

[00:03:36] Jim Henson: So given that layout then, how are Walker, uh, and Warnock then campaigning in the runoff to accommodate appealing to those, to those key voters?

[00:03:47] Greg Bluestein: You know, walker’s basically using the same campaign rhetoric that he used before the midterm.

[00:03:53] Greg Bluestein: It’s very far right. It’s very maga. You talked about transgender policies and border [00:04:00] control and a lot of the. They tend to energize conservative voters. The one difference though is now he has Governor Brian Kemp on the campaign trail with him. Kemp has cut ads and gone to headline events with him and, and, uh, held fundraisers for him.

[00:04:14] Greg Bluestein: So Kemp is, is now at a side and, and, and, you know, the two of them really steered clear of each other through the midterm and for a split ticket. Who’s the more who’s, you know, Brian Kemp is pretty much the most effective Republican messenger you can have because all those split ticket voters back Brian Kemp in the first place for, for Rothell Warnock.

[00:04:32] Greg Bluestein: Um, his strategy has always been sort of a, a, an and strategy. He’s trying to go after the base and those split ticket voters, so he won’t shy away from the fact that he supports federal voting rights expansions and gun control. You know, abortion rights and a lot of the issues that also galvanized Democrats.

[00:04:53] Greg Bluestein: But what he does on the campaign trail is he talks more about working with conservatives like Ted Cruz than he [00:05:00] does working with President Joe Biden. And it’s not because Ted Cruz is very popular with voters, it’s more of him showing that, Hey, I can work across party lines when. Right.

[00:05:09] Jim Henson: I, I it’s sort of a non-threatening non, you know, less partisan pose.

[00:05:13] Jim Henson: So what Talk, talk for, talk to us for a minute about what the governor’s calculation is here in terms of, uh, you know, the, the, the shift in tone and, and I mean, there’s a certain, there’s, it makes a kind of partisan sense, but it’s a pretty big shift.

[00:05:29] Greg Bluestein: It was definitely a big shift. Look, I mean, in the run up to the May primaries here in Georgia, um, Donald Trump had backed David Perdue, a former US Senator to run.

[00:05:38] Greg Bluestein: Uh, Brian Kemp. Donald Trump also backed Herschel Walker. So when I asked Herschel Walker after he cast his ballot in May, who he voted for, he wouldn’t tell me , but when, when, when we got Hershel Walker, uh, at a, uh, at a student event in North Georgia, a few weeks before that primary, he said he was mad at both Brian Kemp and David British running against each other.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Greg Bluestein: So basically, you know, Herschel Walker wanted little to do with Brian Kemp. Brian Kemp wanted little to do with Herschel Walker. When I, when I would ask Brian Kemp about what he thought about Herschel Walker’s latest controversy, he’d say, Hey, I’m trying to help the whole ticket. He would never really single out Herschel Walker, but now the calculus has changed.

[00:06:17] Greg Bluestein: Brian Kemp is this national figure. He beat both Donald Trump’s handpick candidate and Stacy Abrams, the sort of arch nemesis of many in the G o p in the same election cycle. So his national fortunes are rising. He’s the most popular Republican in Georgia, and so he’s, he can use that network to help Herschel Walker.

[00:06:36] Greg Bluestein: He also knows that if Herschel Walker loses and Brian Kemp was on the sidelines, then he would get blamed. So at this point, he’s. I think he’s doing more than the bare minimum, but he’s doing enough to show Republicans that, hey, he’s doing his part to help Herschel Walker without necessarily hitching his wagon to Herschel

[00:06:53] Jim Henson: Walker.

[00:06:53] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and, and a Herschel Walker loses. It’s gonna be hard to, to really cast a lot of blame on anybody else, [00:07:00] right?

[00:07:01] Greg Bluestein: Yeah. Herschel Walker has so much baggage, so many personal issues, so many controversies and scandals that, um, that, you know, he will be the first person to blame. Um, but you know how things go after elections, the knives come out and I could.

[00:07:16] Greg Bluestein: If Ke was on the sidelines, I could see, um, some elements of the Republican party trying to blame him, uh, to score some

[00:07:23] Jim Henson: points. Right. So that, yeah. So the, the political logic there makes, makes a certain amount of, uh, uh, certainly mercenary sense. Right. Um, exactly. I’m also reading a lot about how about turnout and turnout being comparatively high.

[00:07:37] Jim Henson: Um, what do you make of turnout? You’re more, you’re more familiar with the patterns. I think there’s typically a pattern in coverage for people to see somewhat high turnout and declare it super high. But what, what should we make of the.

[00:07:50] Greg Bluestein: So we’re definitely seeing high turnout, but the thing we have to remember is that we used to have three weeks of early voting in person turnout.

[00:07:58] Greg Bluestein: Now it’s down to one week. So in that [00:08:00] condensed timeframe, you’d expect turnout to be higher. That being said, it is still explosively high. I mean, it’s the turnout set records, uh, for in person early voting turnout in. On both Monday and Tuesday, the first two days where there was mandatory statewide, um, early voting.

[00:08:17] Greg Bluestein: So that’s tremendous numbers and it’s numbers that Democrats are very, uh, enthusiastic about because, uh, many of those votes came. Most of those votes came in counties that Senator Rafael Warnock won as opposed to Hersha Walker leading counties. Now, there’s also been high turnout in these lightly populated sparser rural.

[00:08:38] Greg Bluestein: Um, where Herser Walker’s gonna dominate. Um, but the biggest turnout is gonna be in the cities of Atlanta, Savannah, Columbus, uh, Macon. Those are the cities where Democrats are hoping to build giant margins because what they worry about is election day turnout. Republicans in Georgia tend to win big on election day turnout, so it’s up to Democrats to build that cushion early on.

[00:08:58] Greg Bluestein: Herschel Walker won election day turn out [00:09:00] by double. Here in Georgia in November, but it wasn’t enough for him to win outright. And so Democrats hope that they can build that giant cushion for themselves these next

[00:09:09] Jim Henson: few days. Yeah. That, that’s a, that’s a strategy, not, not, not unfamiliar, you know, from Texas.

[00:09:15] Jim Henson: Um, yeah. You know, I, I’m curious the, the polling. And these races are, are just notoriously difficult to pull. But the, the most recent polling that I’ve seen in Georgia, and I’m not that familiar with the array of, of pollsters, are there, um, seems to have this race roughly tied. Does that make sense to you?

[00:09:34] Jim Henson: What, you know, and again, this is grossly unfair, but, but I’m gonna ask it anyway, what’s your sense of where it is?

[00:09:41] Greg Bluestein: Yeah, no, that’s a, it’s a very fair question actually. Um, and there has been very little. Not only because it’s really hard to pull a runoff electorate cause you’re just not show sure who’s gonna show up.

[00:09:51] Greg Bluestein: But, but also because there’s a Thanksgiving holiday right in the middle of it, . And so, yeah. You know, there, even though there’s been hundreds of millions of dollars [00:10:00] in ads spent on this race, there’s still a lot of people who have no idea there’s a runoff. Um, and others who are just completely exhausted and tired of any sort of political, um, uh, races in Georgia because we, we have become a battle.

[00:10:13] Greg Bluestein: Um, but not everyone likes the fact that we’re the battleground, but the, the one or two polls that have come out and the internal polls that I know about show a very close race. Um, the, the, a poll conducted for a A R P by a bipartisan polling firm put had a Senator Warnock at 51 Herschel Walker, 47. Um, so four points up with some undecideds, and that’s within the margin of error.

[00:10:38] Greg Bluestein: So, um, so close race. Democrats and, and frankly, a lot of Republicans feel like Senator War has the upper hand right now, um, because of Herschel Walker’s blunders, but also things that he can’t really control. And the biggest thing was the fact that spin control was clinched by Democrats a few weeks ago with the races in Nevada and Arizona being called.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] Greg Bluestein: Um, that meant the Democrats had 50 seats, which meant that with the tie breaking vote from Vice President KA Harris, they retained control of the Senate. That was very good news for Senator. And the reason why is he wants to make this race a contrast between him and Herschel Walker and not nationalized it.

[00:11:15] Greg Bluestein: And Herschel Walker, his case for really skeptical Republican voters was, Hey, even if you don’t like me, a vote for me is a vote for Republican control Senate. And now we can no longer make that argument.

[00:11:26] Jim Henson: Right? And, and, and that has also helped, uh, as I gather, Warnock maintains something of a spending advantage.

[00:11:34] Greg Bluestein: Oh yeah. Um, that, that has helped. But Warnock has been an elite fundraiser for the last two or three years here in, um, around the nation. I mean, he raised unbelievable amounts of money due to that 2020 runoff. Mm-hmm. . And he’s continued that. So his, his list, his donor list, his donor files probably like 6,000 pages long.

[00:11:54] Greg Bluestein: And he’s retained that advantage. Um, he just, he really is one of the elite fundraisers in the nation. [00:12:00] You know, he, he’s raised more money than a lot of presidential candidates have raised. He raised 52 million in just basically a three week span, um, just a few weeks ago. So that’s, so he has this enormous fundraising advantage, and he can use that to spend the money on unconventional ways.

[00:12:17] Greg Bluestein: I mean, he’s still battering the airwaves with all sorts of. Um, attacking Herschel Walker and also, you know, promoting himself. But he can also spend that money on things like airplane banners that go over college campuses and bus stop transit ads and, and, you know, things that, uh, digital ways to reach out to voters.

[00:12:36] Greg Bluestein: They’re, they’re paying, um, local activists basically to mine their own cell phone data and go tell all their contacts to vote for Senator Warnock and, you know, hoping that it’s a little different. If you see it on ad that if it comes from a, a friend, an old friend of yours, um, and so, and that that’s. Um, thing that, you know, you can’t do if you don’t have tens of millions of [00:13:00] dollars at your

[00:13:00] Jim Henson: disposal.

[00:13:01] Jim Henson: Right. It’s nice to have enough money to leave basically. No method unused if you can, right? Yep, exactly. Um, last question. I know you’ve gotta run, Greg. Just a a a just quick for our listeners, as somebody that knows Georgia, you know, what will you be watching on election night? What are the, what are the leading indicators that you’ll be looking for that people can watch?

[00:13:19] Jim Henson: They can just turn the volume down as they watch returns.

[00:13:22] Greg Bluestein: Yeah. Well first we often have our most populous counties, just like in every other state. Uh, they, they come in later . And so we’ll be really closely watching the strongholds of Fulton and DeKalb County. DeKalb County is the most important democratic county in, in Georgia.

[00:13:39] Greg Bluestein: It is, it is a trove of votes, and it’s what put Senator Warnock and Senator Ooff over the top, back in 2020 one’s runoff. And so, uh, I don’t expect an early. Um, even if, even if the race looks like it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, tilting one way or another, um, because it’s hard to call race before you have those troves of votes [00:14:00] in from Fulton and DeKalb counties, which may basically are the two core counties in Atlanta.

[00:14:04] Greg Bluestein: And also we’ll be watching at some of the splits in these, um, in these, uh, the close end suburbs around those counties. Um, these are the areas. Herschel Walker significantly lagged behind Brian Kemp. And if we’re seeing, you know, these are some Republican leaning counties, but if we’re seeing Herschel Walker, Wendy, these counties by, you know, four or five points, not 10 or 15 points, you know, he is in trouble.

[00:14:28] Greg Bluestein: It’s

[00:14:28] Jim Henson: not enough. Uh, Greg, I said that was the last question, but I gotta ask you one quick thing or I’ll lose my card here. Has the, the residency issue in terms of, uh, Herschel Walker having a homestead exemption. In Texas affected this race at all? Is it penetrated or it just one of like so many things.

[00:14:48] Greg Bluestein: It’s one of so many things and it’s funny having covered this for a long time, because this is dejavu to me. I mean, we were writing about residency issues from last year even before he got in the race. Um, [00:15:00] remember Hersha Walker didn’t even register to vote in Georgia until a few days before he formally had launched his campaign, and even after he launched his campaign, he was still doing TV interviews and other things from his Texas home.

[00:15:12] Greg Bluestein: Um, I think the bigger question. Is, or the bigger issue for him is that he continues, uh, to say that his Texas home and court documents, at least in this, in these tax records, is his principle home. And it just goes to show you, you know, a campaign like that has hundreds of people working for him. Someone should have caught that and no one did, and it’s become a major issue for him.

[00:15:35] Greg Bluestein: Will it make or break his campaign? Um, the folks who are voting against them aren’t, aren’t voting because of that. There’s so many other issues, but it gives democrats one more talking point and it gives Herschel Walker one more headache at a time where he really needs to run this sort of error free campaign.

[00:15:50] Jim Henson: Yeah, it, it’s fair to say he already had some explaining to do, I guess, um, yes. And that that homestead break isn’t worth all that much. So given that Greg Bluestein, thanks a lot for [00:16:00] making the time for this. I know you’re super busy. We’re gonna let you go to your, I think we’ve gotten you in time for your next hit.

[00:16:05] Jim Henson: So thanks a lot for being here and hope you have occasion to have you back. You are the

[00:16:09] Greg Bluestein: best. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:16:11] Jim Henson: All right. Take care man. You too. All right, so thanks again. It was great to have Greg Bluestein on. Uh, before I sign off, I, I wanna flag something that we posted at the Texas Politics Project website.

[00:16:24] Jim Henson: That’s, that’s follow up from some things we’ve talked about on the podcast over the last couple weeks. We have a new post that I think we promised, um, and this posts by Josh Blank and I breaks down the governor’s race by urban, suburban, and rural counties. The numbers should lead us to temper some of the conventional wisdom out there.

[00:16:45] Jim Henson: I think while Democrats dominate the vote in the five most populous counties, republicans still have a real presence in urban areas. When you, when you look at the state of broken down this way, The Democratic vote exceeded the Republican vote by [00:17:00] 550,000 votes, which you know, should be no surprise to anybody.

[00:17:04] Jim Henson: But Governor Abbott still pulled about 1.3 million votes from the largest metro areas. Meanwhile for all the talk about the competitive suburbs overall, the Republican vote in suburban counties exceeded the Democratic vote by about 510,000 votes. So, uh, Republicans, for all the increase in competition that we see, I think most manifests in legislative races are still pulling a lot of votes out of the Texas suburbs, which is where most of the people are.

[00:17:35] Jim Henson: Now, of course, in the rural areas, the Republicans share. Got higher than it was in, uh, was was higher in 2022 than it was in 2014 and 2018, it hit just under 80%. This means that Republican candidates, the Republican at the top of the ticket, Greg Abbott, pulled almost 570,000 more votes from rural counties than [00:18:00]the Democrats.

[00:18:01] Jim Henson: When you put this all together, it’s interesting grist for the postmortem on campaign strategies and for thinking about partisan competition in the next cycle. So have a look at that post on our website, Texas Politics dot u texas.edu. Just follow the link to under in the polling section to the blog. Um, and I think having this, this data to actually look at, we’ve talked about it a bit, as I said in the podcast and we put it in some tables that I think, uh, if you’re listening to this, you’ll find fairly interesting.

[00:18:31] Jim Henson: So, with that, thanks again to Greg Bluestein for being here to Sherry’s expertise on the Georgia race and as always, to our excellent production team in the Deb studio. In the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Thanks for listening. See all the data and more at Texas politics dot u texas.edu and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:18:57] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas [00:19:00] Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.