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Georgia Republican Herschel Walker's Senate campaign has been plagued by allegations that he was hiding "secret" children and that he paid for a former girlfriend's abortion. This week, the former athlete player explained to voters why he would rather be a werewolf than a vampire in a bizarre stump speech.
Even so, Walker's Democratic rival, Sen. Raphael Warnock, is relying in a new ad on a different piece of baggage to hurt Walker: former President Donald Trump.
The 30-second ad spotlights Trump's endorsement of Walker as he and Warnock head toward a runoff election in December, since neither candidate won 50% during the midterm election.
"We must all work very hard for a gentleman and a great person named Herschel Walker, a fabulous human being who loves our country and will be a great United States senator," Trump says in the ad, urging a crowd to vote for him. "He was an incredible athlete. He'll be an even better senator."
The tagline at the end says "Stop Donald Trump" and "Stop Herschel Walker."
That’s not the only campaign message Warnock is pushing:
Statewide runoff candidates in Georgia typically focus almost exclusively on turning out their base in overtime bouts. But U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock is stepping up his appeals to split-ticket voters who sided with him and Gov. Brian Kemp in the November midterm.
In a new 30-second spot released Thursday, the Democrat features a testimonial from Lynn Whittenburg, a north Georgia voter who backed both Kemp and Warnock. She said she was “proud” to support Kemp but that she had misgivings about the former football star.
“The more I heard about Herschel Walker, I became concerned about his honesty, his hypocrisy, but also just his ability to lead. I just can’t get past Herschel Walker’s lack of character,” she said.
“The fact that he lies so freely is very concerning to me. At the end of the day, I have to vote for someone that I can trust and that has integrity, and I don’t believe that is Herschel Walker.”
Whittenburg is among about 200,000 voters who cast ballots for Kemp but withheld their support for Walker. Those split decisions were the main reason the Senate race landed in a runoff while Republicans scored victories in every other statewide race.
The biggest drop-offs occurred in some of the most fertile GOP ground: The vote-rich Atlanta suburbs and a ribbon along the northern swath of the state. And those skeptical Republican-leaning Georgians are again key to Warnock’s strategy for the Dec. 6 runoff.
On top of this, Warnock is expanding his ground game:
Sen. Raphael Warnock's campaign is expanding its field organizing program, offering a look into the areas his team is focusing on ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff against Republican Herschel Walker.
As Georgia's Senate candidates look to drive turnout ahead of the state's shortened runoff cycle, Warnock has added roughly 300 paid staffers and new offices across the state to his voter contact program, his campaign said -- increasing the direct voter contact programs to 18 counties and 19 offices across the state, and more than 900 paid staffers, according to details shared first with ABC News.
Campaign officials claimed the added investments and staff capacity would allow the campaign to knock on more doors during the four-week runoff than in the 16 weeks leading up to the general election, in which Warnock narrowly beat out Walker but failed to crack the 50% threshold required to win.
The voter contact program will be placed in priority counties for the Warnock campaign: Bibb, Chatham, Clarke, Clayton, Cobb, Columbia, DeKalb, Dougherty, Douglas, Floyd, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Lowndes, Muscogee, Newton, Richmond and Rockdale.
These are either in core urban and suburban areas around Atlanta, include some of the state's other big cities (like Augusta and Savannah) or are in the "Black belt" in Southern Georgia.
Also:
Grassroots organizers working to turn out Black voters on behalf of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in next month’s runoff election expected to encounter an exhausted electorate as voters prepare to head to the polls for the second time in as many months. They underscore the importance of educating Black voters about the significance of the Dec. 6 runoff between Warnock and Republican contender Herschel Walker.
Yet voting rights organizations supporting Warnock say Black voters they’ve spoken with remain energized because expanding Democrats’ majority in the Senate even by a single seat would have a significant impact. It would allow the party to combat occasional outliers like Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat with a history of voting against his party.“It is critical we get the largest margin possible, and 51 is determinatively better than 50,” said Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn, a progressive grassroots organization. “It means Republicans can’t block as much of our agenda as they could otherwise.”
In last week’s election, Warnock got 90% of the Black vote, compared with Walker’s 8%, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. In the 2020 general election against Kelly Loeffler, the white Republican incumbent, Warnock got 92% of the Black vote and 93% in the subsequent runoff, NBC News exit polls said. The show of Black support for Warnock in this year’s midterms, combined with African Americans’ role in turning the traditionally red state blue in 2020, has helped keep many Democratic Black voters engaged in the contest.
Epting’s group began working the day after the runoff was declared, “moving on all cylinders,” she said, to encourage Black voters to come out to support Warnock next month. That meant calling voters to remind them of the urgency of the runoff, a consistent email campaign with a similar message and door-to-door canvassing.
“We have to let people know we’re in a runoff and what’s at stake between electing Warnock or Walker,” Epting said. “If we do our job to educate folks about what’s at stake, that there is a runoff election and this is the day by which you need to vote and here’s how you do it … I think we can win.”
Lloyd Ramsey, an Atlanta voter who works in retail sales, agreed, saying voters “might be tired of having to go to the polls” but “aren’t too tired.”
“No doubt, we know we can influence elections here in Georgia, which was something we couldn’t say before 2020,” he said. “We’ve always wanted this power or whatever you want to call it. Now that we have it, we won’t misuse it by not voting in the runoff. That’s not happening — tired or not.”
By the way, love this:
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