Republicans Worry That ‘Red Wave’ in November Is Not Going To Reach Georgia

Georgia, home of the most-watched Senate elections of 2020 and 2021, is shaping up to be close again in 2022, and many are beginning to wonder if Republicans will have another bad year.Governor Kemp and Senator Warnock — both opponents of President Trump — are showing early leads. Polls suggest that Mr. Warnock, the incumbent, is pulling ahead of the famed former running back who is a Senate hopeful, Herschel Walker. Simultaneously, Mr. Kemp appears poised to retain his position as the leader of the Peachtree State. Polls on the Senate race vary wildly, with Republican pollster Moore Information showing the race as neck-in-neck and nonpartisan Quinnipiac University putting Mr. Warnock ahead by 10 points. In the governor’s race, Democratic pollster Data for Progress shows the minority leader in the state’s house of representatives, Stacey Abrams, behind by nine points. Quinnipiac University, however, reports that the race is tied, with both Ms. Abrams and Mr. Kemp at 48 percent.Polling averages tracked by FiveThirtyEight give Messrs. Warnock and Kemp leads in their respective races, suggesting that a significant number of Georgians plan to cast a split ticket, a possibility anecdotally corroborated by a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, Charles Bullock.“What I’m increasingly hearing talking to people on the street and among Republican campaign consultant types is that some share of voters will vote a Kemp-Warnock ticket,” he tells the Sun.A political scientist at Hamilton College, Philip Klinker, is skeptical. In so-called wave years, “things look much more mixed in the summer,” he said.“It’s still early and there’s been evidence in any wave year in July that year that the wave might not happen — maybe it won’t,” he said.Mr. Bullock believes “these trends will hold going forward,” because both Mr. Kemp and Mr. Warnock are popular incumbents, and their opponents have hurt their own chances.In the case of Ms. Abrams, he points to a number of “unforced errors,” including when she said: “I am tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live.”The misstep, combined with attack ads from the Kemp campaign painting her as someone who supports defunding the police, have hurt her electability, Mr. Bullock said. Ms. Abrams has defended her record on law enforcement, saying she has never supported defunding the police.In the Senate election Mr. Bullock reports that Georgia Republicans are worried that Mr. Walker will “self implode” as he comes under more scrutiny between now and November.He argues that Mr. Walker is “going to have to get out in front of people” and that “unless Herschel is spending a lot of time studying playbooks and issues, he won’t fare too well in those settings.”Recently resurfaced video shows Mr. Walker in such a setting in 2019, when he claimed to have been an FBI agent, saying, “Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?” He has previously claimed to have been a Cobb County police officer. Both claims are false.Such unforced errors don’t appear to inspire confidence among the electorate, especially when compared to the campaign of a straight-talking, popular incumbent.“Some share of voters will ask the question of whether Herschel Walker is prepared to represent Georgia, and if the answer is no they will either sit the election out or go to Warnock,” Mr. Bullock said.From all angles, the success of Messrs. Kemp and Warnock appears to be a rebuke of President Trump and his continued influence over the Republican Party. Recent polling from YouGov suggests that a majority of Georgians hold an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Trump.The former president played an outsized role in the GOP primary earlier this year, campaigning on behalf of Mr. Kemp’s opponent, David Perdue. Mr. Kemp, reviled by Mr. Trump for refusing to overturn the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia and declare him the winner, won the race by more than 50 points. Mr. Trump also campaigned against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the primary, but the incumbent sailed to victory anyway over Representative Jody Hice.“May 24, the primary in Georgia, was probably the worst night for Trump since he left office,” according to the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, John Coleman. “Brad Raffensburger winning his primary with an outright majority was a massive black eye to Trump.”Mr. Bullock says Mr. Trump remains popular in the state, “but maybe not as popular as he was two years ago or 10 months ago.“Let me put it in a nuanced sense,” he said. “A share of the Georgia electorate is willing to put Trump in a context rather than say I’m going with him all the way.”Evidence for this comes in the recent victory of Mr. Trump’s pick for lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, a state senator. His victory in the Republican primary came despite warnings from an unnamed Republican political strategist speaking to the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Mr. Jones is “a massive liability, especially heading into November.”“At what point does the FBI call up Burt Jones and say, ‘Hey, you were a fake elector,’ and what’s the effect on the downticket ballot?” the strategist said to the paper. “There’s a massive underlying sense that he can take everybody down.”The Republican strategist, who has not been involved with this year’s campaigns, asked the Journal-Constitution to withhold his name for fear of retaliation.Mr. Jones, among others involved in the “fake elector” scheme, recently received “target” letters from the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, who has convened a grand jury to investigate Mr. Trump’s interference in the 2020 vote. Such letters are normally intended to get the recipients to cooperate with an investigation.Mr. Bullock, for his part, suspects that there might be an unpleasant surprise awaiting Republicans come November.“I talk to Republican campaign consultants and the way that they spin this is that 2022 is going to be a great red wave — but that wave is not going to reach Georgia,” he said. They are concerned, he added, that “in the last days of the campaign,” Republican candidates “may be swept away in a whirlwind of Democratic money.”

Republicans Worry That ‘Red Wave’ in November Is Not Going To Reach Georgia

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