Harry Litman [00:00:06] Welcome to a special edition of Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. Many people are settling into a relative lull for Christmas and New Year's, but not in Georgia, where two of the most hard-fought and consequential elections in recent American political history are being waged. Both are runoff elections for the United States Senate, one pitting Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler against Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock, the other pitting Republican incumbent David Perdue against challenger John Ossoff. Both races are currently neck and neck. Today's episode is devoted to a deep-dive into the politics, strategy and tactics that will determine who will hit the tape ahead at the finish line in the coming fortnight all-out sprint. And our dive companions are a fantastic group of political figures and strategists who together combine deep political savvy - national and local - with block by block knowledge of the Georgia landscape, and they are:
Tom Perez, the chair of the Democratic National Committee since February 2017. Tom previously was the United States Secretary of Labor under President Obama from 2013 to 2017, and before that, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. He was a line prosecutor in the criminal section of that division for many years, which is how we came to meet some 30 years ago. Tom, welcome to Talking Feds.
Tom Perez [00:01:53] Great to be with you, Harry, and with all of your distinguished guests.
Harry Litman [00:01:57] Thank you. Bob Shrum is the director of the Center for the Political Future and the Carmen H. And Louis Warshaw chair in Practical Politics at the University of Southern California. He previously was, and I quote, "the most sought after political consultant in the Democratic Party," and a high level veteran of several presidential and national campaigns. Thanks very much Bob for joining us.
Bob Shrum [00:02:23] Glad to be here with all of you.
Harry Litman [00:02:24] Teresa Tomlinson. She's now a partner at Hall Booth Smith PC, but she's the former mayor of Columbus, Georgia, from 2011 to 2019, where she won reelection handily. She was a candidate in the Democratic primary that John Ossoff won to face David Perdue. An eighth generation Georgian, she's repeatedly named to the list of the most influential figures in the state. Thanks for being here, Teresa.
Teresa Tomlinson [00:02:53] Great to be here.
Harry Litman [00:02:54] And Nikema Williams is the congresswoman elect for Georgia's 5th Congressional District, that is to say, taking over the district previously represented by John Lewis. She's also chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, the first African-American woman to serve in that position, and is also a member of the Georgia state Senate and was one of the 16 electors for Georgia in the 2020 Electoral College. Welcome, Congresswoman-elect or thank you very much, Nikema. All right. Let's start with an important aspect of the overall dynamic of the runoffs. It strikes me that each pair of candidates has sort of opted to be joined at the hip here. Ossoff is running with a much more progressive message than in 2017 when he was a candidate, closer to Warnock, Loeffler and Perdue, both are turning backflips to emphasize their allegiance to President Trump, which is certainly not how Perdue ran. So the sense from outside is a bit of R1 and R2 against D1 and D2. Is that accurate? And if so, do you think it's wise for the Democratic candidates to be putting in like that, and I guess relatedly, do you anticipate it's going to be 2-0 or 0-2 as opposed to a split?
Teresa Tomlinson [00:04:15] Well Harry, I'll jump in and say it's going to be 2-0, so get ready for that. And yes, the fact that they're running as a ticket is something that's highly unusual. As you know, rarely do you have two senators running at the same time, two Senate seats up like this. It's only happened, I think, twice before in special election circumstances. And so what you have here are two different candidates in the sense that Warnock, of course, is from Savannah. He is very familiar with those smaller town Georgia living, if you will. He's very comfortable there, he's campaigned there really since the beginning. John Ossoff is the national and Atlanta Georgian political phenom that you know him to be, and so he has really cranked out the younger voters. We had the highest younger voter turnout in the country on November 3rd, 21 percent. I think we can credit John Ossoff with that.
He really mobilizes those north Atlanta suburbs where voter dense Lucy McBath district to just familiarize you a little bit with that area. And so what we have here is usually you're running a candidate that has one set of strengths. They're either playing well outside of Atlanta or they're motivating our base, and a lot of people often talk about that as people of color who have largely been overlooked in many of the Democratic political strategies in the past, but not in Georgia, because it couldn't be if you were going to be successful and then, of course, to mobilize the voter-rich Atlanta area. So now we get a twofer, we get two candidates that are both bringing their strengths to this ticket, and it's really creating a synergy, sort of a - and Bob will remember this, but certainly he was there - but kind of that Clinton/Gore, even Obama/Biden political bromance vibe going on. And it's just an exciting time here in Georgia.
Bob Shrum [00:06:07] You know, I think that was kind of inevitable because of the nature of what's on the line here. It's not just two Senate seats, it's control of the United States Senate. I think pooling their resources, very, very good idea. And I think, and I'd be interested in how other people react to this, I think President Trump's behavior, both in terms of denying that he lost the election, engaging in a fusillade of conspiracy theories, denouncing the governor and the secretary of state, making Loeffler and Perdue walk the line of his fabulous denials. I think that's all helping the Democrats, because I think it's sending a message to those voters who voted for Joe Biden, and there are going to be more, I think, who come out maybe in this election. It's sending a message to them that if they want to see a different kind of presidency and a different kind of government that actually gets things done, then they better vote for the two Democrats. The Republicans somehow or other think that passing a skinny COVID-19 relief bill is going to turn the election around, I don't think it is at all. I think people are very clear in their own heads that it was Mitch McConnell who stopped this relief bill for months. And if you're going to get the kind of bill that Joe Biden wants to propose, then you're going to have to probably have a Democratic Senate.
Nikema Williams [00:07:28] I think it also like, it can't be lost that Georgia does not have a lot of inelastic voters. When you look at our electorate, we have - this is a base turnout election on both sides. And so that's why you see the candidates playing to both sides. And when you look at some states, we don't have party registration, so that's for one. But when you look at states like Florida and people are talking about all of the independents, we just don't have that - our electorate is so inelastic that we don't have that large group of independents that each side is appealing to or trying to pull from. The Republicans know exactly what we know in the Democratic Party. We have to turn our people back out to vote, and there are a few people on our side who stayed home in November and we're working to turn them out too, and we're seeing the excitement on the ground. I was just driving out of the neighborhood a couple of hours ago on the way to get these new glasses checked out and I called my husband, I was like, "Leslie, I see more canvassers in the neighborhood!"
And so, like, every day, like we get excited about canvassers in the neighborhood, and we live in southwest Atlanta, where I'm in the deepest blue of the blue district in the state, and so we know that every additional vote that we turn out in my deep blue district in metro Atlanta is a win for us, because there are still people here in my district that I've had to work to turn out who feel like they've been unlooked and unheard and unseen in the political process. So I've made it my plan and my goal as the new member from the Fifth Congressional District that we are not ceding any part of the state. I was born down in Teresa's part of the state in Columbus and came of age here, and grew up politically here in Atlanta, and I'm just, I'm all over the state making sure that we let everybody know that every vote counts and we're turning our people out. And Republicans, I don't know what they're doing over there when they get done fighting and fussing and going back and forth with each other, maybe the election will be over and we'll have our two new US senators in place, so.
Tom Perez [00:09:21] To put a slightly finer point on - and by the way, I have a long and proud history with Nikema. We should take a step back and say, I mean, this is John Lewis's replacement and she will be the first to acknowledge the big shoes she has. But I'm hard pressed to think of someone better qualified than Nikema. She was party chair of Georgia, and we got to be very, very close then, and she's a rock star. So all of your listeners understand that we mourn the loss of John Lewis, but he gave us our marching orders and he told us that voting is the most important nonviolent act known to humankind to form a more perfect union. And to put a finer point on what Nikema just said, there's that old commercial I used to watch growing up, "this is not your father's Oldsmobile." Well, this is not your father's George either. Look at the Biden coalition, and somebody mentioned young people and the tremendous increase in the number of young voters. A million people turned out in November that didn't vote in 2016. You look at the remarkable strength in metropolitan Atlanta, and remember, the sixth congressional district was once Newt Gingrich's district, and now you have Lucy McBath winning it for a second time. In the run up to 2018, the weekend before the 2018 midterms, I was knocking doors with a woman named Jonae Wartel, who is currently running the coordinated campaign for this upcoming election.
And we were in the Seventh Congressional District, didn't quite make it to the mountaintop there, but again, a fusion coalition, now we have elected a new colleague for Nikema. And so you have hundreds of thousands of Latino voters who are going to turn out, hundreds of thousands of AAPI voters, about 35-40,000 Native American voters, remarkable increases in African-American voters. The early turnout for the runoff of African-American voters is actually exceeding the pace of the turnout, thanks to people like Nikema. And it's an every zip code approach, yes, we've got to kick butt in metro Atlanta, no doubt about it. But, you know, you go to places like Savannah and elsewhere in Columbus, and other parts of the state and Stacey Abrams and Nikema and others understood that we've got to have an every zip code strategy, and that's what we've been doing for the last four years. We invested money at the DNC to identify best practices to turn out rural African-American voters, because you can't win statewide if you're just focused on metro Atlanta, you got to focus everywhere, and we were frankly leaving votes on the table.
Harry Litman [00:11:58] Well, let me push back on just that point, because some elections are partly about choices, although I know that there's a lot of resources in there. But look, Biden well-outperforms not just Trump in 2016, but even Abram's in 2018 and winning the first president to win in Georgia since 1992. I hadn't realized till I was researching here, even Clinton didn't win Georgia in 96...
Bob Shrum [00:12:25] By the way, Harry, he didn't win a majority of the vote in 92 because that was a three way race. Biden's performance here is really extraordinary.
Harry Litman [00:12:35] Yeah, but I want to push back on, I'm sure you're going to say do both, but I'd like to try to get more nuanced or strategic. His victory really does seem to have been what The New York Times calls among the 6th District, affluent suburban, maybe even traditional Republican voters who loathe Trump. But then also Abram's success in the general turnaround in the state, to put it within the grasp, has had everything to do with some demographic changes. But really, as you were saying Nikema, increase in registration all over the state. When it's over, if it's a 2-0, there's going to be an analysis of what really mattered more. Well, let me put it this way: what are the two campaigns doing to try to at least replicate what Biden was able to do in November with respect to suburban Atlanta voters?
Nikema Williams [00:13:31] I'm going to push back against you a little bit, just looking at where we have come from in the state. This wasn't just a one election cycle when, if you look at our numbers that have been trending from 2012 to 2014, every two years we have state legislative elections, and you look at the gains we've been making at the state legislative level, and that has been across the board, you'll see that it was not just about someone rebuking Donald Trump. Now, I will tell you, I was the first person to sign up to get him out of office, ready to vote against him, and many, many Georgians were with me. But this election, like the narrative that this was about Donald Trump and people coming out to turn it against him, it is false. Like we have been building on this cycle after cycle, and if you look at our legislative numbers, you look at Lucy McBath, we're the only red to blue flip in the country with Carolyn Bordo in the 7th Congressional District. So this has been deep organizing on the ground, cycle after cycle, across the state.
Harry Litman [00:14:25] And would you say, you read both about changing population in the state, but then you really read about unprecedented galvanizing of voters who were always there? Do you see one or the other as being the bigger factor in the bluing trend?
Nikema Williams [00:14:42] Our demographics have definitely shifted and that has been in our favor. However, demographics alone don't turn out voters. So it's been the organizing on the ground, the direct voter contact that we got away from at some point that we've gotten back to, and we've been building upon that. GOTV does not mean 'Go up on TV,' we got to be out in the field. We got to be talking to voters and we can't just be on TV.
Tom Perez [00:15:05] Harry, in 2017, when I got to the DNC, we looked at the entire map and asked the question, where are the opportunities for 2020? And the two states that jumped off the map, didn't need a Ph.D. in analytics, were Arizona and Georgia. Because we lost Arizona by about three and a half points, lost Georgia by about four and a half, and we weren't fully throated in those presidential investments in those states because there was so much else going on. And so, as Nikema correctly pointed out, you've got to look at these things long term. There have been sustained investments in Georgia. There began sustained investments in Arizona, there continue to be investments in Texas, and I guarantee you, if you're still doing this podcast in '24, we're going to be talking about Texas as the next frontier of presidential battleground politics because Obama lost by like 14 in 2012, Hillary lost by eight, Joe Biden lost by five. It's the same trajectory as we see in Georgia. And the key is when you don't make it to the mountaintop, you can't pick up your marbles and go home. You've got to redouble your investments, understanding that this is a long term play.
And that's where I take my hat off to Stacey and Nikema and the New Georgia Project and so many players in the ecosystem. And by the way, we can do this not only in places like Georgia, but we can do this in places like Mississippi and Alabama. And I know you're probably saying I'm nuts, but I'm not, because if we actually make investments now with voters building relationships, when politics becomes showing up at the black church every fourth October, pretending that you care, that's transactional politics. When politics is about in 2017, making investments in rural Georgia, in exurban Georgia, understanding better that we have remarkable numerosity among AAPIs and Latinos, but it hasn't translated into participation because we haven't made those investments. When we understand, as Nikema said, you know, she has constituents in her district who we know if we get them out, we're going to have a very high probability of success. But we haven't made those investments. That's why we did something called ''chop it up.' It was an investment talking to African-American males, because we weren't doing that enough, quite frankly, as a party. And so, it's not about just getting 90 percent of the votes, about getting 90 percent of a huge denominator.
Nikema Williams [00:17:41] And, you know, what they were doing, Tom? Black men were staying home. It's not like they were going to vote Republican, but they were staying home. And so engagement and giving people a reason to turn out to vote and talking about the issues that matter to them turns out voters. But we have to have that engagement, and we've been doing year round engagement on the ground here in Georgia.
Teresa Tomlinson [00:18:01] Harry, I'll just say, sing it sister to Nikema, she's absolutely right. And when you were saying earlier this is a result, The New York Times had said that this is really a result of the northern Atlanta suburbs, let me just point out that votes are fungible. You need as many of them as possible to get it done. So, for instance, the next five largest cities in the state after Atlanta and the metro Atlanta area are Columbus, Savannah, Athens, Augusta and Macon. Those five cities netted Biden. Netted Biden 267,000 votes. He won by 12,000. So if they hadn't turned out like they were supposed to, he would have been in trouble and he would have lost. So you have to play it everywhere, and there are these blue, blue, blue areas all throughout Georgia, and our object in this election and every election now going forward certainly, is to turn them all out and I'll also say, we had 76,000 new people registered since November 3rd. We've had 130-something thousand people who did not vote on November 3rd who have already voted in this runoff. And so this engagement factor is so important, and that's why we - I think Bob said this is a base election, someone said this is a base election. Usually you can sit down and do the math. How many people turned out, 40 percent of that from the general is going to be what happens in the runoff. But you don't know when you have 76,000 new people registered between the last election and this one. We have 135,000 people who didn't vote, now voting.
Harry Litman [00:19:35] Just to be clear, that's that since November 2020.
Teresa Tomlinson [00:19:39] Yeah, November 3rd.
Harry Litman [00:19:40] So I want to go now to what's been the big story of turnout to date. But just one quick question. This is about the Republicans, so it's not your look out and it can be hard to psychoanalyze. But, Bob, you said something very interesting to me, which is you think that the lock step and man has been in lock step. Loeffler is boasting. 'I'm the only senator has been 100% with Trump.' They're embracing the ridiculous election narrative, you suggested that that wasn't their kind of a strategic decision in the same way Warnock and Ossoff have found it productive to lump together, but actually marching orders from Trump himself. Is that how you see it? And as a matter of Georgia politics, is it, in fact, a iffy proposition to be so associated with the president?
Bob Shrum [00:20:30] Well, look, I think Trump held the sword of Damocles over their heads. 'If somehow you don't walk a completely straight pro-Trump line, I'll do you in.'
Harry Litman [00:20:39] Then what? I mean, 'I'll do you in this election?'
Bob Shrum [00:20:41] 'Yeah, I'll do you in this election. Because I don't really care that much. It's not about me.' If it was about him, he'd care. So they are actually replicating the campaign that, in my view, didn't work for Trump. It's a complete appeal to a base that is too small to prevail in the end. And I think what Tom and Nikema and people like Teresa have done and Stacey Abrams actually refutes a lot of political scientists who think that organization is only good for about one percent of the vote. Now, in this election, you have Ossoff ahead by .4 and Warnock by .9, that one percent could matter. But I think what's being proven in Georgia is that contacting people and talking to people and maintaining relations with people can increase your vote and can make more than one percent difference. Message does matter. I mean, I think we'd all agree with that. And if you look at this campaign, the message, for example, about insider trading on the part of both Perdue and Loeffler, I think has some real power with people. And it actually helps to motivate turnout. And as the guy who used to make those TV ads, Nikema, and go up on television, I think that what we're seeing in Georgia and I'm seeing it from a distance, is very effective Democratic media campaigns, and very effective Democratic voter contact campaign. And I think you have to do both.
Nikema Williams [00:22:07] I agree. We need both of them. We can't - I don't want them up on TV, and we're not sharing our message on TV, but it cannot just be go on TV. But I agree with you, we need both. And have you all seen those Warnock ads? Like the one with the dog and the poop bag? That was a good ad.
Bob Shrum [00:22:23] Yes.
Teresa Tomlinson [00:22:23] Yeah, that's a great ad. You know, one thing that's interesting, too, that we really, I don't think know the true effect of yet in Georgia, is that when we had the impact of COVID and we made the decision as a state, thanks to people pushing the secretary of state like Nikema and so many others at the state legislative level, to send out those absentee ballot requests. What happened was if you're over 65, once you do that, you get an absentee ballot or mail in ballot for every election within that cycle. So you were saying earlier, most people are lulling into the holiday swing of things and they wouldn't normally be voting. That goes back to the calculation of what is a turnout in a quote, 'base election.' We usually can figure that out through just math. But this time, we've got all of these people that will vote in big elections, just going to their mailboxes saying, 'oh, I got I got a mail in ballot. I think I'll fill that sucker out.' And that is why you're seeing these very high numbers, too, is because we're making it easier for people who are literally just putting it on their plate and allowing them to vote.
Harry Litman [00:23:26] Yeah, my understanding is both older voters, mainly absentee and African-American voters, are not only voting in large numbers, but so far even outpacing the November numbers, which were impressive already. So let's go to this, because this is really, this is what you're hearing in the national reports. We have about five million people voted in 2020, that's about two thirds of the whole electorate, which is pretty high. And so far, 1.4 million people in a week or so have voted now. So that's a mammoth early voting...
Teresa Tomlinson [00:24:01] 1.67 million as of today.
Harry Litman [00:24:04] OK, so you're probably getting this quarter-hour by quarter-hour, alright. So 1.67, a third, a full third of at least the numbers who vote. It would be considered impressive if you had the same overall numbers as in a presidential election. So strategically, A, what does it tell you? But B, how does it, if at all, change conduct on the ground? I mean, do you - are certain things now safe and can be put away? Or do you have to redouble, what kind of tactical or strategic impact does this huge early turnout have for both sets of candidates?
Tom Perez [00:24:40] All of the above. I mean, I think back on the success of November, roughly 20,000 Democrats living overseas who are eligible to vote in Georgia voted in Georgia. We have a program called Democrats Abroad. We actually talk to these folks, just did a fundraiser with Dems Abroad, Nikema knows them well. There were roughly 15,000 ballots that got cured. What does that mean? If somebody voted early, they forgot to sign it, or there was some other defect, and because we're running an active program contacting voters, we're able to secure those ballots. I bring all these things up because this election is going to be razor thin as well, and everything you do matters. Something like 40 or 50 thousand people who didn't vote in November have voted already.
We're running program, as you pointed out, Harry, on voters who turned 18 after November the 3rd. When you look at these in isolation, you say, 'well, that's just 10,000, or that's just 5,000 or that's just 20,000, but as Bob knows better than anyone on this podcast, that's real money in the world of 12,600 votes or whatever the heck it was. And that's why when I say all of the above, it it is all of the above. And the beauty is that there's been, there was a really, really good Biden Harris coordinated campaign. And then you have the success in the 6th and 7th congressional districts, and then you have the energy you know, everyone's got their marching orders from John Lewis. All of these things add momentum. And then to again, put a slightly finer point on what Bob said. If this infighting among Republicans, because we have unity, unity around the themes of jobs, justice, health care, they're in a circular firing squad.
Harry Litman [00:26:20] And what would you say the terms of it are? What are the stress pivot points of the intra-party disputes there, would you say?
Tom Perez [00:26:27] Full disclosure, I sued Brian Camp twice when I led the Civil Rights Division. Brian Kemp is in the Hall of Fame of Voter Suppression. So let's just be really clear about that, and to watch him now in a battle with Trump is truly a remarkable thing. But again, we don't know what the impact of that will be. And for the purposes of our organizing, we're assuming that's going to be zero, because we don't want that to be any sort of source of complacency on our folks. We're pedal to the metal on all of these interventions that I've just described, because that's how Joe Biden won. When you're in a purple state and make no mistake about it, Georgia is purple, and so it's going to be a jump ball.
Harry Litman [00:27:10] All right. Well, let me follow up. You're right, you know, who will know until after January 5th, but what teeny little effort will matter. But the last two weeks at first, I think the Rs nudged out a little, do you look at that as just sort of so much noise, or do you think the 1 percent movement here and there represents something real, if temporary on the ground? And if so, for example, why have the last three days been slightly advantageous for the Democratic candidates, whereas the previous two weeks, or is that just too fine-grained to even discuss?
Teresa Tomlinson [00:27:48] I think it may be too fine-grained to discuss, but I will make a couple of observations. The polls in Georgia are pretty good. I mean, if you go back to 2016, 2020 this past election, they were pretty good, right on. But I will say that the Republicans do typically have a surge at the end.
Harry Litman [00:28:04] Is that right?
Teresa Tomlinson [00:28:05] Oh, yeah, you should...
Harry Litman [00:28:06] How do you account for that?
Teresa Tomlinson [00:28:07] Well, I just say you just get busy. I you know, I don't know. They just show up. I cannot tell you. Going back to Jason Carter and Michelle Nunn, how great we felt then to see on election night, we had seven point losses. It was stunning, and it just didn't seem real because we could see it on the ground, all of this happening. They just pulled that rabbit out of the hat. And that's what we're doing now, as Nikema was saying, with all that mobilizing. I think you're going to see these fluctuations, but one thing, when you said, 'what's that Republican strategy or lack thereof doing,' one thing to watch is really the inter-party attack on Kelly Loeffler, because Congressman Doug Collins, Republican, wants one of two things, he has his choice. And I see him angling for either, and that is he wants to run against a future senator Raphael Warnock, in two years. Because don't forget, Warnock is in to fill an unexpired seat of Johnny Isaacson, which will be a two year term. He'll be back up, similar to Doug Jones had to go back up.
So Collins is thinking that's what's going to happen related to the Loeffler seat. He'd love to see Loeffler go down, and in his eyes, have a Democrat that he then can run against. He's not taking into consideration what has changed in Georgia. The other thing he's looking at is he's kind of got this running - not kind of, he does have a running feud with Kemp because Kemp thumbed his nose at Collins in a huge political gimmick, put Kelly Loeffler in the seat in order to get white women. They thought, 'oh, well, where is, we need a white woman? Where's one of those?' And they went hunting around, they found Kelly Loeffler and stuck her in there and really just pissed off Collins big time. So he's looking to primary Kemp, and that's one of the reasons I think you see everybody in Trump's inner circle throwing bombs at Kemp. They're weakening him because I think Doug Collins I mean, this is me making huge assumptions, you know, he has direct access to those folks and his designs are one of those two seats and so she is particularly, I think, vulnerable because she's being eaten away by her own party.
Tom Perez [00:30:01] Got the endorsement of Attila the Hun, though.
Harry Litman [00:30:04] Let me ask about her, when really all four and returning to what Bob called message, obviously she, among others, she's trying to paint Warnock as literally as a radical Marxist. The Dems are returning fire with some very strong ammo about their fishy, at best, financial transactions. The main question is this, as far as message goes, is the die cast, would you say now that all four are who they are for Georgia voters, and we turn now almost exclusively to get out the vote or other kinds of issues? Or is the work still about trying to change how Georgian voters see any of the four?
Bob Shrum [00:30:50] I have to agree with something Tom said earlier. You have to keep doing both, you have to keep doing everything you can do. You don't want to yield on message, you don't want to assume that your message is already through and not continue to push it. So you've got to continue to push it, and at the same time, you have to do the kinds of things that Stacey Abrams and Nikema and Teresa and other people in Georgia have done so well over these last few years. So I think you push it all the way. I'm not sure which part of the message works best, whether it's the insider trading and the self dealing on the part of both Republicans, or whether it's this whole notion that if you really want to deal with a COVID crisis, you really want to get COVID relief, that you've got to get Mitch McConnell out of the way. That may be too political an argument for a lot of voters. I just don't know.
Nikema Williams [00:31:41] So I also think when we're talking about the messaging and what they're saying on TV, don't let it be lost upon you, when Tom was talking about voter suppression and Brian Kemp, that a lot of those ads are less about changing someone's mind and a lot about keeping some people away from the polls. There is a lot of the suppressive messages there, and there's a lot of that going on as well.
Bob Shrum [00:32:02] In those Republican ads, yeah.
Nikema Williams [00:32:02] Like, you hear on the Democratic side, you hear our candidates talking about what they're going to do and what they want to do and how they're going to get it done, and that the two Republican candidates they're a detriment to that or a hurdle to getting our kids back to school safely, to getting our economy back on track, to getting a national response to this pandemic. But then you hear the ads that are meant to stoke fear from the Republican Party. And those are about voter suppression and voter fear and voter intimidation.
Harry Litman [00:33:59] All right, so Georgia has become the center of the United States, if not the world. I'm wondering what that sort of feels like and if there's a downside. I think a lot of people felt that Susan Collins was able to weather the storm in Maine in November, out of a kind of resentment that there was so much national focus. But all indications are to date that that Georgia and the vote are very energized. Yesterday, Kamala Harris is there for the Dems, Ivanka Trump, and there's going to be much more of Pence, Trump himself on the 4th. The fact that is so big and national, is it a source at all of concern, would you say, or how does that characteristic play out, especially maybe outside of Atlanta?
Teresa Tomlinson [00:34:46] I don't think that having the political big dogs, if you will, come to town are anything but just making us proud, it just makes Georgia proud that we're, that we're in the game and that people are taking us seriously. I think that that's not as important - typically in Georgia, you have to watch that the candidate not become a celebrity. And that's why you see Georgians want workhorses, not show horses. And I mean, it really does, and even those that are sort of those much-elusive people in the middle, the business Republicans who will swing to vote for someone who's more of a workhorse and more knowledgeable than somebody they think is a lightweight on the other side, there's not many of those. And in this runoff, I don't think that they would be as significant. It is a base turnout election, but I don't see that, that it is a big deal nationally, that people are watching us play negatively. I think it's playing positively in Georgia.
Bob Shrum [00:35:42] And I think Trump cuts both ways. He helps motivate his own people to get out, but he's also a great turnout machine for Democrats. They want him gone from the White House. It's amazing to me, by the way, that he's going to show up on January 4th. So many of the votes are already going to have been cast by then, I think it's out of peak, it's what I said earlier. He doesn't care. It's not about him. If it were about him, if Governor Kemp were violating the state constitution and calling a special session of the legislature and trying to send electors, which would be absolutely illegal, I think, then maybe he'd be more into this. But right now, I think his only concern is he canceled a trip out of his frustration and anger with Kemp, and then I think people in the White House went to him and said, 'you have to go down there at least one more time.' And so he's going to go down on January 4th.
Harry Litman [00:36:37] On the 4th, you think is almost sticking it to him?
Bob Shrum [00:36:40] Yeah.
Harry Litman [00:36:40] In a way.
Nikema Williams [00:36:41] You said it's because it's not about him, but I think that's what it is, because it is only about him in his mind, that he doesn't care enough to do enough to help his own people.
Tom Perez [00:36:50] Let me remind the group in 2019, and we never know if past is prologue, in 2019 we had two gubernatorial races in red states, Kentucky and Louisiana. The common denominator in both was that Donald Trump showed up the week of the election on behalf of the Republican candidates for governor in those states. And what happened in both those states was the Democrat won, Andy Beshear in Kentucky, John Edwards won reelection in Louisiana. And so it is interesting, and let me be clear, turnout was up in both of those races. So he did turn out his voters, but this kind of illustrates Bob's point. We went from about 900,000 voters in 2015 in Kentucky to 1.4 million and change in 2019. This is going to be a similar thing. And why do all the prominent surrogates show up? Because this is a base turnout election, and when Barack Obama does that event he did recently, that's a motivator for our side, and Kamala being there and the president-elect, et cetera. So you're going to see more folks and I leave you with this, which was in 2017. I remember talking to folks in Georgia and in Arizona and they were always saying, 'I want to be more relevant. I want people to show up in 2016. I thought we could do this.' I haven't gotten that call recently from any friends in Arizona and any friends in Georgia, folks, you have arrived. And it's our job together to make sure we do it together.
Teresa Tomlinson [00:38:20] Bob has said about Trump, why is he coming on the 4th, and he didn't know what he's doing. I think it's because in his mind - and God knows, it's not a place anybody wants to be - but it is consistent with his theory of the case, which is nobody should be voting except on Election Day. And that's why he's showing up on the 4th, is he can't in his weird ego, he cannot act like he cares about this election until voting day.
Bob Shrum [00:38:44] He's living in an alternative universe.
Nikema Williams [00:38:47] But we already knew that.
Harry Litman [00:38:48] We did. All right, we have a few minutes left, and I would just like to ask everyone to help us kind of understand what's coming down the pike and how to process the election, including on the 5th. So is there any sort of true bellwether county, either in terms of turnout or who wins and by how much? What's a good prism to apply to actually follow things in the very last days, but especially on the 5th itself? Anybody?
Teresa Tomlinson [00:39:20] Well, you want to make sure that you've got Fulton, Clayton and DeKalb coming in and coming in really heavy, and that means you got your voters out. Those are the density, but when you start looking at, well, what's going on in those rural states, because it's the aggregation of those smaller vote totals that allow the Republicans to squeak ahead of Democrats. So you want to look at places like Peach County and see it's a smaller county, nothing that happens there is going to change the election - well, I don't know with a 12,000 vote margin, you know, it just might. The volume's not enough, but it is a wonderful bellwether to see what is going on in those more rural counties if the Republicans are able to really gin up their vote down there. If Peach County goes Democratic, then we've got the night.
Nikema Williams [00:40:03] I agree with Teresa, Peach County is the place to watch. It was one of the 10 bellwether counties in the country. But also one of the things that I've been noticing. Y'all will all remember the night that we were talking about Joe Biden clinching Georgia, and we're watching the numbers come in from Clayton County. Clayton County is a deep, deep blue district, but have always kind of lagged in voter turnout for statewide results. And we have invested deeply into the organizing game in Clayton County. I've invested myself in the Clayton County Democratic Party. A small portion is in the 5th Congressional District, and today I got a text message from my husband who eats lives and breathes these numbers y'all, but he was like 'Nikema, Clayton County is catching up with the pace car.' So we're watching Clayton County, we're going to continue to do the work on the ground there, but watch Clayton and watch Peach.
Tom Perez [00:40:52] And remember, it's not just what was the margin in a county, never forget the denominator. So much of what we accomplished in 2020 was the margin of a big denominator. Success in states like Georgia, and it's not limited to Georgia, is about running up the score where you can and controlling the bleed where you need to. So I'll be looking, for instance, at the 6th Congressional District, which is Lucy McBath district. The vice president, now the president-elect, won the sixth congressional district, but there was some drop off between the vice president and then, like John Ossoff, to take one example. So I'm going to be looking there to see and I know there's a lot of work being done to address that. And so if you can control the bleed in places like that, that's one of the keys to success. Everything makes a difference. Dems Abroad, carrying the votes, every single thing makes a difference.
Harry Litman [00:41:45] Bob did you have any final thought?
Bob Shrum [00:41:47] Yeah. The one thing we haven't mentioned, and I think we may have to watch, especially if either of these elections are very close, is the role that the lawyers and the local officials and the secretary of state are going to play, because there's already been litigation in Georgia, attempts to suppress the vote that has so far failed. But if this is a 5,000, 6,000, 8,000 vote election, there's certainly going to be a recount, we're going to wait for days afterwards to know who won. But if Teresa is right and this is 2-0, t's poetic justice because the reason we have these runoffs and the reason that, for example, Perdue didn't just outright win is because they were set up years and years and years ago to prevent African-Americans from getting elected so that if you didn't get 50 percent of the vote, and the assumption was no African-American ever could, you had to go to a runoff. And the second assumption was that people wouldn't show up in the runoff so that the Democratic voters wouldn't show up in the runoff. Well, I think that's going to be proven wrong this year. If Democrats do go 2-0, there's going to be a lot of poetic justice as well as a Democratic-controlled Senate.
Harry Litman [00:43:00] Bob, Nikema, Teresa and Tom, thank you so much. We'll be watching very, very, very, very, very closely on January 5th. I think we really feel a lot more educated now, thank you so much for doing the educating.
Thank you very much to Tom, Bob, Teresa and Nikema, and thank you very much listeners for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts, and please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter, @TalkingFedsPod , to find out about future episodes and other Feds-related content. You can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have full episode transcripts, and you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com , whether it's for Five Words or Fewer, or general questions about the inner-workings of the legal system for our Sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry: as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking.
Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Don Griffin are our contributing writers. Production assistance by Matt McArdle. Our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Thanks very much to Noah Radil for additional research assistance for this Georgia episode. Our gratitude, as always, to the amazing Philip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds as a production of Dalito, LLC. I'm Harry Litman, see you next time.
