The $ 900 billion pandemic aid package that President Trump signed late on Sunday night gained traction on Monday as an issue in the second round of the Georgia Senate, with the two Republican presidents trying to catch the wind in favor of stimulus project and claim credit for helping to bring aid to the state.
“Help is on the way,” Senator Kelly Loeffler tweeted Monday morning, applauding the stimulus package with its billions of dollars for the distribution of vaccines, schools and other beneficiaries, and a payment of $ 600 to millions of Americans. She and her senior colleague, David Perdue, launched a declaration On Sunday night, thanking the President for finally approving the stimulus funds, avoiding the fact that Trump plunged the project’s fate into turmoil last week by calling it “a disgrace” and demanding that direct payments increase to US $ 2,000.
At the same time, the two Democratic candidates – Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock – criticized the Republican-led Senate on Monday for delaying months on the bill. They considered the $ 600 payments too small and stuck to the president’s request for larger payments to reinforce their position.
“David Perdue doesn’t care about us and $ 600 is a joke,” Ossoff told several hundred people at an outdoor rally to get votes with Warnock in DeKalb County, one of Atlanta’s suburban counties that have become each more diverse in the last decade.
“You send me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate and we will put money in your pocket,” said Ossoff. He faces Perdue in the second round, while Warnock challenges Loeffler.
Perdue has run ads attacking Ossoff for calling the $ 600 exemption checks “a joke”, although the president has also called them too small. Mr. Ossoff wrote on Twitter that Perdue was not even in favor of a first round of direct payments last spring.
With just one week to go before Election Day in Georgia, Trump’s initial refusal to sign the stimulus package put Loeffler and Perdue in a delicate position. Both supported the approved measure with a direct payment of $ 600, but both are strong supporters of Trump and are in danger of irritating him if he publicly disrupts him about the need to sign the bill.
“The president continues to put the two Republican senators in difficult positions during a highly contested Senate runoff,” said Bill Crane, a former Republican politician and analyst in Georgia.
Despite the confusion, the president tweeted On Sunday, he would make a final appearance in the campaign on behalf of the two senators in Dalton, Georgia, a carpet manufacturing center in the north, on the eve of the election. Both disputes drew national attention and a record flow of money because of their potentially essential roles in determining the balance of power in the Senate.
If both Ossoff and Warnock win, there will be a 50 to 50 split, with control of the chamber passing to Democrats because of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ ability to break off relations.
The fate of the two senators in the unusual second round may boil down to participation in Dalton and the rest of northwest Georgia, a conservative area where Trump won 70% or more of the vote in most counties. His decision to visit the region, where he remains popular, seemed to aim at a last-minute effort to motivate Republican voters.
The election appeared to be heading towards a record turnout in a second round, with 2.1 million Georgians already having voted on early voting sites or by mail. The biggest turnout so far has been in the Democratic areas around Atlanta.
Crane said he saw advantages for Democrats in early voting, voter enthusiasm and money. “Democrats are killing in the mail,” said Crane, also noting that 76,000 new voters have registered since the November election, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“This again shows enthusiasm and would play for the Democratic side,” he said.
Republicans expressed concern that Trump’s repeated complaints about “fraudulent elections” – a false claim he made to explain his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr. – discouraged his party’s voters from attending Senate qualifiers. Crane said the message from far-right commentators on electoral fraud lingered in the state, with some Georgians confused as to whether their vote will count. “Georgia is still in conflict over ‘we should vote’,” he said.
With early voting continuing through December, Warnock and Ossoff’s campaigns focused on Monday on encouraging voters to vote. The drive-in event, held in the parking lot of a Baptist church, featured performances by several rappers, including Shelley FKA DRAM, JID, Tokyo Jetz and BRS Kash.
Ossoff, who runs a documentary production company, and Warnock, the pastor of a historic Atlanta church, encouraged his supporters to go to the polling places or cast their votes at the ballot box. “The whole country is watching voters in Georgia to see what we will do at this historic moment,” said Ossoff.
Both Ossoff and Warnock – as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill – viewed stimulus checks as a winning issue and took advantage of lower payments and the president’s opposition to the stimulus package in an effort to increase his chances in Georgia. On Monday, hours before the House of Representatives voted to advance the $ 2,000 stimulus checks demanded by Trump, Ossoff tweeted, “@Perduesenate, when will you commit to $ 2,000 exemption checks for Georgians?”