Incoming Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in Georgia on Monday ahead of the state’s runoff elections, telling voters that “everything is at stake” in the contest for two Senate seats on January 5.
If Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeat their Republican opponents, current Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the Senate will be tied 50-50 with Harris as the tie-breaking vote. Both parties have turned their resources to Georgia in an attempt to increase voter turnout in the hotly contested election.
“2020 ain’t over until January 5th,” Harris told a crowd in the town of Columbus, joined by Ossoff and Warnock. “Everything that was at stake in November is at stake leading up to January 5th.”
Encouraging supporters to vote, Harris said, “Send these two, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the United States Senate, to say it is us, the people of Georgia, who will make a decision. It will not be made for us, we will decide who represents us.”
Ossoff echoed Harris’s comments in his own remarks to the crowd.
“Let’s be very clear about the stakes of these elections, because if [Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell continues to control the U.S. Senate, he will try to do to Joe and Kamala just like he tried to do to president Obama,” Ossoff said.
With Democrats set to control the House and the presidency, Republicans are hoping for at least one Senate win in Georgia to offset Democrats’ power. A recent poll by Emerson College showed that Loeffler and Perdue hold a slight lead over their opponents. However, Joe Biden was able to win the presidential election in Georgia by less than 13,000 votes, and Ossoff and Perdue were forced into a runoff after neither candidate obtained 50 percent of the vote in their contest.