Democrats Aim to Suppress Trump Voters as Last-Ditch Effort in Georgia as Biden Braces for Losses

An ad released in the final hours of the campaign on Monday squarely focused on trying to split Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) from President Donald Trump. “Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, squaring off with President Trump,” a narrator says at the opening of the ad. “Expected to appoint Kelly Loeffler to the open U.S. Senate seat.”

The ad focused on trying to split Trump from Loeffler, by highlighting how Kemp—Georgia’s governor who Trump says he intends to back a primary challenger against in two years—appointed her to the seat vacated by the now retired former Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA). But the most interesting part of the ad may be how it opens: “I’m Raphael Warnock and I approved this message.”

That’s right: the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat nominee for one of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats—both of which are up for grabs in Tuesday’s runoffs—is running advertisements trying to depress the turnout of his opponent’s base. The voter suppression effort seems to be an indication of where everyone knows this race will be decided: by President Trump’s supporters. Do they follow his guidance and show up to back Loeffler and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) on Tuesday? Or do they do as the Democrats want them to and stay home? It’s anybody’s guess, but a lot rides on whether traditional GOP base voters turn out on election day in Georgia or if they sit this one out.

One person who seems particularly worried about the outcome, at least privately, is President-elect Joe Biden. According to a report Tuesday morning from Politico, the Democrat presidential candidate who became the first since Bill Clinton in the early 1990s to flip Georgia—Biden finished barely ahead of Trump on Nov. 3, and Trump contends he still won the state and that fraud led to Biden’s victory—believes that both Warnock and Jon Ossoff will lose their races on Tuesday.

The leak, which came just hours after Biden himself campaigned for them in the Peach State ahead of Trump’s rally for Loeffler and Perdue late Monday night, was brutal. Biden’s team, Politico wrote, is “privately skeptical about Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock’s chances.” Losses by the two Democrats, too, will drastically change what Biden is able to accomplish in his administration once he takes office on Jan. 20.

“And though confidants say that the incoming team’s core priorities for that 100-day agenda will remain the same regardless of the outcome — the pandemic, the recession, climate change and racial inequality — they concede that the scale of their plans could change dramatically come Tuesday evening,” Politico’s Tyler Pager and Megan Cassella wrote on Tuesday.