A.G. Gancarski
On one of her last days as a United States Senator, the Vice President-elect visited Georgia to make the case for two Democrats running to replace the Peach State’s incumbent Republican Senators.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California was in Columbus on behalf of Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, challengers to Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
VP-elect Harris, in the now-familiar setting of a socially-distanced, stay-in-your-cars-and-honk event, made the urgent case to Georgians to flip their Senate seats blue and give her the gavel in case of a need for a tiebreaker vote.
Her remarks went roughly 20 minutes.
Harris, adopting the regional cadences and rhythms of southern speech styles in a nod to the local market, appealed to Georgians who voted for her and Joe Biden, the first Democrats to take the Presidential race in the Peach State since Bill Clinton in a three-way race in 1992.
The remarks tended toward repetitive catch phrases and praise for the November vote with calls to action to do it again in January.
“You made a statement about who we are as a country,” Harris said.
“Don’t put us in a box and tell us who we are. We will tell you who we are,” Harris said. “That’s what you did. That’s what you did in Columbus.”
She thanked those on hand, “asking for a little bit more.”
“We will have our voices heard. We will not let people silence us,” Harris said.
The Vice President-elect described the scene in Georgia before the November election, referring to “the kind of games they were playing, to make it difficult, to suppress our vote, to discourage us.”
“The same challenge exists today,” Harris said. “Why are so many powerful people trying to make it so difficult for us to vote?”
Harris added that “what we did in November, we can do again.”
“This is about our lives, about the lives of our children, about our community and the lifeblood of our nation,” Harris thundered.
Harris noted the unique situation in front of Georgia voters, a chance to send not one, but two Democrats to the Senate, two “strong voices of the people of the state.”
“You have it in your hands to make a statement about who is Georgia and the power of the voice of Georgia,” Harris said.
Medicaid expansion, Harris promised, would be among the possibilities should Democrats win the seats Jan. 5.
Harris wasn’t the only high-profile surrogate in the state Monday.
Ivanka Trump, in the state for the Republican ticket, also spoke to the high stakes, saying that the elections next month were the “most important Congressional runoffs in our nation’s history.”
“David and Kelly are champions for American workers and families. Their opponents are too extreme for Georgia,” Trump warned.
