WABE’s Week In Review: The Final Push Before The Senate Runoffs
With just a couple of days left before the Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections in Georgia, we are bracing for more television ads, mailers and visits from surrogates stumping for their candidates.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is expected to stump here on Sunday. Then on Monday, both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden are set to rally in Georgia. Trump is expected to hold a rally in Dalton, while Biden is set for Atlanta.
Meantime, Trump, this week, made more baseless claims of election fraud in the state and said he won here. He also called on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to resign and added “a disaster” and “stupid” to the list of names he’s called Kemp.
“No one, whether you’re mad at me–whether you like me, should get distracted by anything other than getting out to vote,” said Kemp in response to Trump’s tweet. “That is where my focus is. I don’t want to wake up on Jan. 6 and wonder what else I should have done.”
More than 2.5 million Georgians have already voted in the runoff election.
More on the candidates…
The eyes of the country’s political world have been on Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler and Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for weeks now. Yet, there still may be things some voters don’t know about them. And despite the polarized political climate, some things they even have in common. Hear their profiles and read more from WABE’s Emma Hurt.
Getting out the Latino vote…
Latinos are a growing population in Georgia, and their vote could play an important role in determining who gets elected in the Senate runoff elections. Hear more on what advocates are doing to get them to the polls from WABE’s Martha Dalton.
The “other” race on the ballot…
Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats are the main focus for most ahead of the runoff. But there is a third race on the ballot. And, as Molly Samuel told us, the runoff race for a seat on the Public Service Commission could have a big impact on how the state addresses climate change and your power bills.
A new year… a new (not-so-good) record…
New Year’s Eve set a record for confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state at 8,499. That number was then eclipsed on New Year’s Day at 8,719 cases. Experts had warned us about traveling and gathering for Thanksgiving and the December holidays. They say we are seeing the results of not staying home and practicing safety measures now.
Hospitalizations hit more than 4,000 in the state as some hospitals remain overtaxed and short staffed to deal with the influx of patients.
The five highest totals we’ve seen since the pandemic began have happened in the last couple of weeks.
Get more on COVID-19 in the state at our special section.
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